false 4 0 false false Sat May 23 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Mar 06 16:00:37 -0800 2009 Sat May 23 16:47:58 -0700 2009 Fiddler on the Roof, Amy Tan, and the Buena Vista Social Club, respectively. I appreciated her takes on communism and socialism, ideologies I feel totally ignorant of no matter how much I read about them (perhaps it's because they were embedded into her travelogue rather than discussed abstractly). At times her idealism and naivete irked me, but the adventures and revealing conversations more than made up for it (and who knows, I might be ten times worse if I found myself in her situation).

Side note: I breathed a sigh of relief when she let up on her vegetarian principles long enough to experience at least the Chinese cuisine.

This increases my thirst to pursue modern accounts of life "around the bloc." I am interested to see how much life has changed even in the last 10-15 years since she completed her travels there (primarily, the W effect). And I need to go to Cuba.]]>