My Mother in Havana: A Memoir of Magic & Miracle

by Rebe Huntman

A daughter’s search for her deceased mother brings her face to face with the gods, ghosts, and saints of Cuba.

“My Mother in Havana lifts the veil between the living and the dead and makes believers of us all. This story of a mother's absence and a daughter's need is written with a lyricism that filled my heart with beauty while also making it ache for loved ones lost. This is a stunning debut.” —Lee Martin, author of the Pulitzer Prize Finalist, The Bright Forever

“I closed this book believing more than ever that the people we love, including the people we’ve been, never really leave us.” —Maggie Smith, New York Times bestselling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful

Writing with a physicality of language that moves like the body in dance, Rebe Huntman, a poet, choreographer, and dancer, embarks on a pilgrimage into the mysteries of the gods and saints of Cuba and their larger spiritual view of the Mother. Huntman offers a window into the extraordinary world of Afro-Cuban gods and ghosts and the dances and rituals that call them forth. As she explores the memory of her own mother, interlacing it with her search for the sacred feminine, Huntman leads us into a world of séance and sacrifice, pilgrimage and sacred dance, which resurrect her mother and bring Huntman face to face with a larger version of herself.

“In Huntman’s soul-stirring memoir, the author invites us to experience moments unbound from our accepted divisions of physical and spiritual worlds. With a pilgrim’s devotion, and a grieving daughter’s heart, Huntman takes us with her to places where, if we open ourselves fully, “one could simply lift one’s palm and brush the heavens.” —Brenda Miller, A Braided Heart: Essays on Writing and Form

“More than a memoir, My Mother in Havana is a window to the spirituality of Cuba; Huntman’s deep research and engagement with the rituals, specialists, and devotees of Afro-Cuban religion reflects her in-depth knowledge of these practices as both an observer and a participant.”—Grete Viddal, PhD, Department of African and African-American Studies and Anthropology, Harvard University; Tulane University Stone Center for Latin American Studies Fellow

“Rebe Huntman’s My Mother in Havana does what all good memoirs should: travails a life with wisdom and insight, born of intimacy and vulnerability. Like the Trinity, My Mother in Havana is three things in one: an engaging travel narrative, a moving grief excavation, and an awe-inducing spiritual journey. Unlike the Trinity, Huntman’s memoir defies the container of a single religious tradition. Huntman embraces multiple spiritual paths with humility and respect, seeking not just a mother beyond the grave, but a holy maternal energy long suppressed by mainstream traditions. My Mother in Havana is deeply feminist and fascinating—a profound depiction of one woman’s spiritual quest for wholeness and healing.”—Heather Lanier, author of the memoir Raising a Rare Girl

“My Mother in Havana is full of ceremony and ritual, movement and music, miracle and myth. This evocative memoir takes us along on the writer’s quest “to call the ancestors and listen for their answer.” On this remarkable journey, the veil between the spirit world and this world, between past and present, between who we were and who we are—“the thin scrim that separates this moment from what’s to come”—nearly dissolves before our eyes. I closed this book believing more than ever that the people we love, including the people we’ve been, never really leave us.”—Maggie Smith, New York Times bestselling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful

“Rebe Huntman knows we are the stories we tell ourselves, and at the age of forty-nine, she flies to Cuba find the story she needs to tell, a shape she wants to live inside. Huntman’s invitation in My Mother in Havana is so loving and generous, folding time and geography, loss and love, the corporeal and the spiritual, until we are all caught up in the swirl and breath and blood of the dance. In language pulsing with rhythm and ritual, Huntman leaves room for us to imagine what we might be looking for in our own lives, how we might need to mother and be mothered as we open to the messy wholeness of our own stories. What a gift.”—Jill Christman, author of If This Were Fiction: A Love Story in Essays

"My Mother in Havana belongs on every bookshelf--right between Loving Pedro Infante by Denise Chavez and Suttree by Cormac McCarthy, with wrinkles on the cover from holding it and spending a quiet time reading it again and again." --Edward Vidaurre, author of By Throat, By Miracle: New & Selected Poems

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction

280 pages, Paperback

Published February 18, 2025

About the author

Rebe Huntman is a memoirist, essayist and poet who writes at the intersections of feminism, world religion and spirituality. For over a decade she directed Chicago’s award-winning Danza Viva Center for World Dance, Art & Music and its dance company, One World Dance Theater. She collaborates with native artists in Cuba and South America, has been featured in LATINA Magazine, Chicago Magazine, and the Chicago Tribune, and on Fox and ABC. A Macondo fellow and recipient of an Ohio Individual Excellence award, Rebe has been awarded grants and fellowships from The Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Ragdale Foundation, PLAYA Artist Residency, Hambidge Center, and Brush Creek Foundation. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from The Ohio State University and lives in Delaware, Ohio and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Both e’s in her name are long.

Reviews

[Alena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you Rebe Huntman and Monkfish Publishing for the Advanced Reader Copy of this debut memoir. Right away, I need to acknowledge that I know this author, although it’s been many years since we’ve seen each other. I acknowledge this because I initially might have given up on this memoir because its style and content were so outside my comfort zone. For the first 50 pages, I couldn’t figure out the pacing or perspective and, honestly, was a little uncomfortable with the talk of goddesses and communing with the dead. However, because I am always in awe when someone I know in real life manages to write and publish a book, I persevered.
I was richly rewarded.
Once I surrendered to the movement and tenor of Huntman’s voice, I discovered an honest and heart wrenching exploration of grief, of self-discovery and of faith. None of these explorations are paths I would follow personally but I recognized the love, the frustration, the fears and the strength it takes to find oneself as a fully evolved woman. Huntman shows a vulnerability that is sometimes heartbreaking to witness, but is the beating heart of her story. Her willingness to surrender to her quest for understanding and healing was captivating. Plus, she’s incredibly smart and this memoir is filled with history and cultural information … Certainly I know much more about Cuba than I ever did.
This won’t be every reader’s cup of tea, but for those willing to lift the veil between life and death, between what is seen and what is felt, willing to open up to new ways of living and believing, this is a worthwhile read. Magically, it fulfills one of my main reasons I define myself as a reader … Rebe Huntman opened an entirely new world to me.

[Laura Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had the privilege of reading an advanced reader copy of My Mother in Havana. In this beautifully written memoir, Huntman reveals just how much wisdom we can gain when we open ourselves to other cultures. Through a deeper and wider search for the feminine and divine, Huntman challenges and empowers the reader to be brave and embrace the beauty and power of our lives. As she takes us on a journey to expand our own humanity and learn universal truths, she also peels back the layers of her own evolution and understanding of dying and loss. Anyone who has grieved and lost will be comforted by her lessons and insights. I highly recommend this book!

[Sarah M. Wells · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful, poetic, musical, mystical journey that swept me away, to an exotic land with rich cultural and religious traditions, all of which serve as the tributaries to Rebe Huntman’s search for a lost mother and a greater sense of self. Rebe’s writing makes me long for the same mystical encounters and makes me yearn for that same sense of connectivity that, as an observer or outsider, feels just within reach, if only we could break free of our own self-consciousness. Combining the complexity of Cuban spirituality with a contemporary tango with what it means to be female, with an undergirding of grief and loss and longing for a mother lost to cancer, Rebe is a master storyteller whose words will hold you captive. This truly is a memoir of magic and miracle!

(I am grateful to have received an advance reader copy to review this book.)

[Patrice Wynne · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are curious about Cuban culture & AfroCuban spiritual traditions, this riveting memoir by choreographer, dancer, poet, memoirist, Rebe Huntman is one to savor. Rebe writes eloquently and sensuously about her journeys to Cuba to spiritually connect with her mother who died when she was young in writing that is joyous and fascinating, revelatory, profound, evocative, and courageous. Experience a rarely seen side of Cuban culture through intimate writing and photographic imagery. The book is a celebration of Cuban culture, spiritual traditions, and people—their enormous generosity and exuberance in living, their heritage of living gods and goddesses, spiritual practices, syncretism of Afro Cuban and Catholic traditions, their resilience.

Memoirs are a genre that I read voraciously and this is one of the best I’ve read. I highly recommend My Mother in Havana for friends who have lost their mothers and those who wish to learn from other cultures as a guide to our death and loss experiences.

[Anna Cunningham · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read. A beautiful memoir where the author takes you on both a physical and spiritual journey to find her mother but also herself. Losing her mother at only 19, Rebe Huntman navigated life by building walls to distance herself from her grief. Thirty years after her mother’s death she finds herself looking for a way back to her mother. Huntman’s memoir takes us on this journey to find not only her mother but also the greater spiritual mother that society has hushed and altered over time. Her story tells not just the present journey, but of the past, the pain, and the events that shaped her life and brought her to Cuba. Traveling across Cuba to find her mother, Huntman searches for the goddesses and saints of Cuba, the rituals and dance linked to the divine feminine and exquisitely intertwines these two pilgrimages into one beautiful journey. Her honesty and vulnerability invite us to look within and complete our own stories.

[Colleen Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely beautiful memoir that takes the reader thoughtfully through the spiritual and the physical, the soft and the powerful, the past and the present, the “logical” and the emotional. Huntman introduces the reader to the history and rituals of the Afro-Cuban cultures and religions that shaped her own deeply profound journey to reunite with the memory of her mother. As a woman, a daughter, and a mother, I was moved to tears more than once by her words.

[Marty Ross-Dolen · Rating 5 out of 5]

If it’s possible to be transported to a vastly different world through words, to a place rich with spirit, color, warmth, and culture, to a place imbued with an unfamiliar faith and feel, then Rebe Huntman has expertly transported her readers. What a gorgeous book My Mother in Havana is. Huntman’s grief and resolve, search and discovery, and deep connection to womanhood through history are palpable on every page. Slow down and savor this beautiful, powerful read.

[V. Hoffecker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thirty years after her mother passes, the author, Rebe Huntman goes to Cuba in search of the essence of her mother. Like her mother, Rebe is a dancer. She studied the original Afro - Cuban dances in her forties, “that connect us with the breadth and stories of the Gods”. Of all the gods, Rebe identifies with “Ochun”. “She is queen of the rivers and a dancer”.
While learning about the gods from the Cuban culture, Rebe discovers her mother and herself. She also discovers a relationship between the Cuban gods from the religion of Santeria and Our Lady of Charity from the Catholic religion. Both religions emphasize the mystery of the female role in their culture. Rebe takes an amazing journey in search of her mother and herself.
So fun to know and yet, not know the author, as if to meet her again for the first time! Rebe’s journey to discover her mother is intertwined with self discovery. Her writing style is intertwined like her mother’s story. A very interesting read. There are so many layers that I went back and read the story a second time and discovered even more to enjoy. Immerse yourself!
Rebe, Thank you for sharing your journey! Your story makes me want to know more about my own mother.

[Richard Hicks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Raw, emotional and honest.....I started this book not knowing what to expect. I finished it knowing more about another country, another culture and the way all of us, no matter where we're from, have to at some point wrestle with grief and loss. A terrific book that tells how one woman reaches for something beyond what we "know" in an effort to find answers to questions she's not sure how to ask. Rebe Huntman's written a winner.

[Cait Weiss Orcutt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was swept away by this memoir — over the course of a few hundred pages, Huntman unfolds and relayers multiple worlds: a mid-century childhood in Midwestern suburbia, a hospital room where a mother lies dying, young single parenthood, the ballroom dance world, a daughter on a pilgrimage to find both softness and power in the heart of Cuba… Sometimes I read nonfiction and wonder how anyone can pretend life moves so solidly, chronologically forward. But in Huntman’s hands, the real back and forth, echoing nature of time appears of the page, like an ocean’s waves, slowly building up the shore of what it means, what she’s looking for, what she finds.

If you’re interested in travel narratives that resist the conventions of travel narratives, memoirs that open the door to the great questions of philosophy, how to survive grief, and/or the intricate weaving of history, empire, power, place, belonging, and never quite belonging in the story of how we are who we are, My Mother in Havana is worth a read.

[Karen Skinner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rebe Huntman managed to do the impossible. Tempt me to read her debut novel My Mother in Havana, despite its promise of being between magic and miracle (a place that makes me abjectly uncomfortable). The temptation was simply the words “My Mother” in the title. A motherless daughter myself, I seek clarity in reading. I was not disappointed. No matter the age or the circumstance, women seem to flounder without the complete and present reflection of their mothers standing with them or behind them in the mirror. Huntmann eschews the ordinary reflections on the missing mother and instead explores the very essence of the mother daughter connection. That the once small town farm girl returns to the more exotic Havana where she once vacationed with her parents as a child, and follows emotional clues to the deepest of longings raises My Mother in Havana to the level of unforgettable read.

[Jenny Patton · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best books I’ve read feature exquisite prose—lines I write in my journal to savor—and prompt my own memories and reflection, and Rebe Huntman’s “My Mother in Havana” fully colors both checkboxes. Though my mother never went to Cuba, excelled at Latin dance, or pursued holistic cancer treatments, Huntman’s recollection of her mother uncovered forgotten memories of my own mother’s journey. Peppered-in stories surrounding Afro-Cuban goddess Ochún, a deity I’d never heard of, have woven their way into my daily thoughts. “My Mother in Havana,” a beautiful book about deities and devotion, helped me summon my long-deceased mother and enriched my understanding of myself.

[Lisa Weldon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learned. I was awed. And on page 219, I cried.

This is a beautifully crafted story of a woman who embraces the soul of Havana in her search of the voice of her deceased mother. During her 30-day pilgrimage she opens herself up to the rituals of Afro-Cuban gods – the music, the dances, the animal sacrifices – and shares her experiences in such a spiritual rhythm that you feel yourself dancing and singing along with her.

I met this author at a creative retreat – we spent only a few meals together. I knew instantly she had an important story, and I am thrilled that I had the opportunity to read it.

Excellent!

[Jaye Schlesinger · Rating 5 out of 5]

"My Mother in Havana" is a memoir of nuance and depth. Huntman’s desire to connect with her departed mother leads her to Cuba, unfamiliar territory to me. I found her language to be masterful and her descriptions so vividly delineated that I felt like I was right alongside her every step of the way. It has been a long time since I have been so fully engaged in reading a memoir, stopping frequently to reread a beautiful sentence, and basking in themes of magic and wonder, memory and connection.

[David Steinhoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rebe Huntman recounts her journey to Cuba to rediscover her spiritual connection to her mother, who died almost 40 years ago when she was still a teenager. The book weaves together her sharp memories of the past with her search for meaning in her own present. The tale is well-written, engrossing and very satisfying.

[Rosanne Billy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I felt like I was right next to Rebe in her travels and explorations in search of her mother. I have always truly believed that those who leave us in the physical world really never leave us spiritually. Rebe's journey has truly reinforced that for me as I have learned to live with the loss of my own mother.

[Sherri King · Rating 5 out of 5]

My Mother in Havanna is a beautifully written memoir by the talented Rebe Huntman. Her journey to reconnect with her mother is written with raw honesty and emotion. Her description of Cuban life and religion pulls the reader into a world of Cuban gods and mysticism. I was left with a sense of hope that we never really lose the connection we have with our loved ones and they are a part of us.

[Karen Poremski · Rating 5 out of 5]

This beautiful book is about the particular details of a woman’s journey through grief and discovery, and yet it also invites all of us to think about how we relate to our mothers—love them, judge them, imitate them, push them away, need them. Ultimately, if we can go along with the writer as she peels back the layers of the most primal needs we have, we arrive at a place where we can rest. We arrive in a country where the mother we need is here for us.

The structure of the book really pulled me forward—from the preface that hooked my attention with its mystery, to the earlier sections that give us the history of the writer’s relationships, to the writer’s pilgrimage to a place so different from her own culture, where she hopes to find some answers, then back to “home,” a place changed by her experiences, as we all discover when we go through something that changes the way we see ourselves in the world.

In addition to telling her own story, Huntman gives us the context we need to understand the significance of what we see—bits of history and cultural information, descriptions of foods and landscapes and music, even analyses of social structures that draw boundaries around how we define women, and what happens when we go to a place where those boundaries are less solid.

The early sections give us the history of the mother-daughter relationship, showing the complex ties between Huntman and her mother, and the dance of a young woman who in some ways wants to be like her mother, and in other ways wants to be nothing like her mother. (This is a dance that feels familiar to me even as it is grounded in the particular details of another family’s history.) Huntman contextualizes her development into womanhood within the structures of power and influence of our culture—the ways our choices are inevitably affected (if not fully determined) by the directives that women be appealing, attractive, submissive, self-denying.

It seems key that the author loses her mother at a time in her life when she is in the throes of this push-and-pull stage, when she feels genuine affection and love for her mother while also being baffled by some of her choices, and judging her for them. The wiser, more experienced writer can look back and give the context to readers (about patriarchy and power struggle) that her younger self didn’t have; it feels like a particularly graceful way to offer compassion to her mother and her younger self, and to all of us caught in an unfair, unforgiving system.

While the writer comes to her profession as a dancer through her parents’ interest in dance, she feels called to practices and philosophies of movement that are largely foreign to U.S. culture, and this calling leads her into cultures not her own. It’s tricky for a white person to write about learning a new way of being by learning about another culture, but in this book, Huntman recognizes her own positionality, and remains humble. In several places, in fact, she relates the pain of standing back, staying at the periphery when she really wants to join in, in part so that she doesn’t center herself and her own desires in other people’s ceremonies and cultural events. (This is a position I wish more white writers would inhabit and acknowledge.)

I was absolutely riveted by the descriptions of Huntman’s experiences in Cuba—her accelerated introduction to their spiritual practices, the painful re-opening of grief, the invitation to new understandings of what a mother is and can be and can do. I almost don’t want to write anything about this section of the book because I want readers to experience it on their own. But I will tell you that I purposefully slowed down in these chapters, especially toward the end, sometimes reading a section multiple times before I moved forward… because they were so beautiful, so powerful, so rich with discoveries I wanted to bring into my own life.

The last section, where Huntman brings her experience back home to Ohio, to her own family and culture and land, are also powerful and necessary. One of the most important parts of learning as we travel is to bring those new understandings—of ourselves, of our purpose, of our new way of seeing the world—back to where we live, so that we can change and inspire change. This part of the book also felt familiar to me, and I appreciated the writer’s honesty about this step of the process feeling awkward at times.

The process of reading this book made me feel seen and understood even as I read about an experience so different from my own, so unique to the writer’s life. As we move forward into a time in which women’s humanity and rights are under question, even under attack, this book gives me solid ground to stand on, a place to turn back to when I reckon the strength of the mother, and of women.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was so happy to receive an ARC for review of My Mother in Havana: A Memoir of Magic & Miracle from the author, my friend Rebe Huntman. I enjoy memoir, hooking my caboose to someone else’s train for as long as it takes to read a couple hundred pages. But I haven’t read a memoir in a long time that’s moved me as much as this one has.

***

“This is the mother I find myself not only wanting to recover but to set free…. Allow herself to be wild and messy, larger than life. Perhaps it is this, more than anything else, that drew me to Cuba. To find a larger story that might hold us both,” Huntman writes in lyrical and compelling language and story.

The heat of Cuba. The closeness of the bodies in motion, swirling around the memoirist as she searches in music, dance and ritual for the essence, the spirit, of her long-dead mother. This is an internal and external search, beautifully balanced. And of course it is! Huntman is a dancer—in life and on the page.

There is the spiritual and emotional search that begins long before Huntman’s mother passes, when the family in America’s Midwest practiced a religion devoid of “the mother” as pivotal figure in a culture that limits women. What does it mean to be a woman—strong and sensual, sweet and fierce—where there isn’t a ready model for that? Suddenly motherless at 19, Huntman aches to be a stronger woman in the face of men and times that want to diminish women. How best to remember the mothers we’ve lost? To honor them with our own fierceness? How to find the mothers we are still seeking?

I pondered these questions as I read, having lost my own mother to cancer more than 18 years ago. How do we start over with a bruised sprit—grief never really leaves us, does it? How do we mother ourselves and our own children, once our mothers are gone?

Huntman could have engaged in a quiet memoir of memory, mind, and spirit. She could have stayed put—sought out “the mother” and her own healing in familiar terrain. But this book captures a body in motion—grieving, yes, but also healing—through ritual, with its particular languages and rites and sacrifices. No, ritual is not a staid thing.

“I’d come to Cuba to discover a faith that might eclipse anything I’d known at home,” Huntman writes. She searches for healing both in Cuba’s Catholicism (with all its “marvelous ‘stuff’”) and in its folk religion of Santeria. We follow Huntman on a pilgrimage in this country her mother also loved, and we discover, in a close, journalistic sense Cuba’s distinct brand of Catholicism, with its own visions, saints, and pilgrimage dedicated to Our Lady of Charity.

We also discover through Huntman’s open-hearted participation what it means to be initiated into Santeria, a faith called witchcraft by many. A faith that takes its sacrifices, that reveres the darkness and the light, the sensuous and the spiritual. A faith with its roots in Afro-Cuban culture that worships a river goddess.

Huntman takes off her shoes, grounds herself, and quite literally wades into the waters, taking us readers on this journey, where we encounter the light and the dark in all—music and dance, worship and devotion, language and understanding, past and present.

Early in this transporting memoir, Huntman says: “In Cuba, I am again trying to find my center.” Dancers talk about their “center”—center of gravity, pivot of movement. But so do mothers—stretched too thin. Coming back to center, to one’s own, to one’s ancestors, again and again.

Huntman draws upon a powerful metaphor for our maternal lines: the Russian nesting dolls, one inside the other inside the other, and on and on. I think of this metaphor often now, as I do of this memoir. “Womb inside womb inside womb.”

Thank you, again, to Rebe, for finding a story large enough for all of us to share.

[Elise Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like the great stories of pilgrimage, Rebe Huntman’s _My Mother in Havana_ crosses spiritual and physical borders to find faith and ancestral connection in the contours of her own body and in the geography and rituals of Cuba. Longing to reconnect with the mother she lost at the cusp of adulthood, Huntman’s body, imagination, and soul are inspired by her encounter with the Afro-Cuban santería religion, particularly with the river goddess Ochún, and the yearly Catholic pilgrimages to the shrine of Our Lady of Charity in the Cuban town of El Cobre. In _My Mother in Havana_, Huntman journeys to Cuba to learn how Ochún and Our Lady can be one, how she remains connected to her own mother, and how she might move forward in her life with one foot off the ground, one hand reaching into the spirit world and one reaching back to her beloved in this one.

If all of this sounds heady or woo-woo, it is not. One of the most remarkable aspects of Huntman’s memoir is her sentences, which are energetic, grounded, rhythmic, and precise. Reading the memoir, I too feel my sun dress sticking to my body after a day in Havana’s heat learning the sacred dances of Ochún. I am repulsed and attracted by the flagrant animal sacrifices of santería’s rituals. Through Huntman, I am also journeying from Havana to El Cobre over one month, hoping to find in this town of copper, violence, beauty, and devotion myself and my connection to something so much larger than myself. For Huntman, language is a dance that brings her close to the Divine but ultimately reminds her of the Divine’s always increasing while paradoxically always eluding nature.

What sets Huntman’s memoir apart is her ability to craft a narrative that formally enacts this temporal fluidity and this spiritual presence. The story is more akin to a fine-woven cloth or a lapping current, where each strand and stream move with, over, under, and against one another. Memories and narration of her pilgrimage speak to one another across the years and across the page without confusion. The result is beauty and scope, dulce y fuerte, and a willingness to explore the boundaries of narrative, alongside the boundaries of time, bodies, and existence. As Huntman writes, “The term Afro-Cuban devotees employ to express the multiple guises of the divine is not faces or avatars but caminos—literally roads or paths.” This memoir is a path, a path Huntman delved into herself to discover and then re-trod to fashion into a way for her readers.

Finally, the book’s cover art is an invitation. Here the sunflower offered to Our Lady of Charity and to Ochún are offered to the reader. The title of the piece by Adrián Gómez Sancho is “Anunciación, la gran ofrenda.” This is what Huntman has made with her memoir: words that announce, a story that is an offering.

[Vicki Huntman · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading an advance copy of My Mother in Havana, a Memoir of Magic, I need to say thank you, Rebe Huntman, for your honesty and for the sheer beauty of your words. Your memoir opens up so many conversations.

What an adventure! Rebe invites us to join her gutsy, uncharted, and very personal exploration of ‘mother’ and ‘loss’, following blueprints created by strong Afro/Cuban goddesses, deities, and principals, and celebrating the feminine in all Her raw and transformative manifestations.

Right out of the gate, Rebe invites us to connect with their story and dive in deep:

‘What did it mean for me to render the mother? Reach my hand toward her, name her, pin her to the page. I’m trying to convince you, dear reader, that there is something in that image that is worth looking at – something in the life of a mother that might stand in for yours as well.’

Challenge accepted! Eyes wide open, I go all in: taking a hard look at my own vulnerabilities and angst as I follow Rebe’s search for answers; losing myself in a new understanding of the Afro-Cuban worship known as Santería or Lucumí; questioning the ambivalence of faith, the promise of faith, the dangers of judging faith, and how this all factors into my own script.

Along the way, Rebe takes a hard look at how the feminine principal has been robbed, challenged, hidden, and degraded throughout history, past and present. Can it be that this loss of the feminine is what provokes our longing for the lost mother and is perhaps at the root of our deepest and most tender sorrow?

The magic of Rebe’s written word is a gift, a virtual dance. I could happily read My Mother in Havana a second time over just to revel in the writing of it.

[Gretchen DuBeau · Rating 5 out of 5]

My Mother in Havana is the story of one woman’s quest to come to terms with the loss of her mother at the young age of 19. The author shares intimate details, viewing her mother through the eyes of a child, an adolescent, and finally, as a grown woman grappling with the hole her mother’s death has left in her life.

As the author questions what it was her mother really wanted from her one and only life and whether she felt actualized, it’s impossible for the reader not to personally feel the gravity of these questions.

Within the profound text are buried the ubiquitous struggles of the human condition.

“Beneath each achievement the same nagging questions: Were we good enough? Had we done enough to earn our place on this earth?”

And the author’s writing is simply beautiful.

“They are beautiful not because they measure up to someone else’s ideas of beauty, but because they measure up to their own. Because they remember - as Ochun does - to revel in their own way of moving through the world, to fulfill the promise of who and what only they can be.”

It’s ultimately about the universal struggle to know thyself, through the most sacred to which we can all relate - the mother.

[Nancy Leatzow · Rating 5 out of 5]

My Mother in Havana: A memoir of Magic and Miracle
Rebe Huntman

Closing this beautiful book, i’m aware of tears and a feeling of having just completed a profound spiritual journey to Cuba. While my story is in many ways different from Rebe’s, still, I found much common ground, almost as if I were reading my own story. I think that many women will have this experience. The mother daughter connection runs deep and is often complicated. Resolving these complications can be a gateway to finding our own spiritual path and resolving our early life issues.

While a college student, Rebe Huntman’s mother died of cancer. The death cut deep and remained a source of profound grief for the next 30 years. This memoir is a story of how she reconnected to her mother through the teachings and practices of the Yoruba religion as it is practiced in Cuba.

Reading My Mother in Havana, we learn of the Yorba deities and especially Oshun, Goddess of the rivers, who later reappears as our Lady of Charity in the Cuban version of Catholicism. Rebe first takes us along with her to participate in a ritual to this Mother of Rivers that is sometimes uncomfortable (animal sacrifice) but but also magical and healing. After finding her own connection to Oshun, the author joins a pilgrimage to Our Lady of Charity. She shares her thoughts, questions, and understandings of what she is experiencing. This is all beautifully articulated and quite swept me away!

As I approached the end of the book, I wondered how she would complete it. She did not disappoint. The story ends with descriptions of her own growth and change as a woman and her connection to the female divine. I encourage you to read this book, this spiritual journey, for yourself. I will end with a quote that meant a great deal to me. It looks at how Rebe opened to a new, non-western perspective, one that respects a paradoxical more female way of knowing.

“ I’ve been raised in a culture that privileged logic and intellect over emotion and intuition. I’d learned to apologize for my sensitivity, my gut feelings and instincts, clairvoyant insights, unknowable knowings.
In Cuba, I’d seen those attributes upheld as a power not less than but different. An emotional and spiritual intelligence that flowed like Oshun’s Waters– mighty, in it’s messiness and wildness, in its ability to create and destroy. A strength that existed not in spite of the things that had been held against us – our intuition and heart, our connection with primal earthy magic things – but because of them.”

I highly recommend this wise and enlightning story that is also beautifully written and a great read!

[Susan M · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was fortunate to receive an advance reader’s copy of My Mother in Havana, a superbly written memoir. Rebecca Huntman’s writing is lyrical and sensual. She writes with both beauty and unflinching honesty. Her memoir is a deep probe into the void; the void left in a daughter’s life by the death of her mother and the cultural void of a society that has banished the sacred Mother. My Mother in Havana is more than the account of Santeria rituals and a pilgrimage; it is the pilgrimage. Rebecca Huntman takes hold of our hand and guides us step by step through her circuitous journey. A journey that began when she was a child clasped in her mother’s unyielding arms as they were dragged ever further out to sea. It is a journey of Goddesses and blood sacrifices. It is a journey of a fractured family, of grief, celebration, dance, ritual, life, death, and transformation. Her story rends the veil between the seen and the unseen, and between the living and the dead. This is a book that does not end on the last page but opens the door for the readers to travel their own paths into the sacred.

[Lauren Mitchell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had the pleasure of meeting Rebe Huntman, in Mexico, through a mutual friend (thanks Nancy!). We connected quickly over a lunch date & I left with a signed copy of her book "My Mother In Havana". I read 70 pages the first night I had it & could not put it down! I'd have finished it in a day or two, had I not been working!
Not only is the story she tells fascinating for its insights into Afro-Cuban culture, but it is absolutely something much deeper for many of us (especially from the USA) ... a story about what it means to find a way to truly connect with the world & our place in it, as humans, in a very practical & grounded way.
Read this book whether you know anything about Cuba, its culture & practices, or not. There is absolutely something here for EVERYONE.

[Jill Bloomberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

My Mother in Havana is an exquisitely written journey through grief and discovery. As the author lays bare her search as an adult to connect to the woman and mother she lost as teenager, she invites her readers to join her without pretense or hyperbole. Her prose is honest and gripping as she excavates her memories of her own mother while exploring meaning and connection in the world of Cuban gods and saints. In looking back and forging ahead, Huntman guides her readers through the familiar and the new in ways that allow us to see both in a different light.

[Helen Cho · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, did enjoy the parts of the story which seemed more substantial to me--her relationships and life with her mother and father. Otherwise, felt the rest of the story was like floating in ether where I never seemed to get purchase on anything solid.

Only problem with thinking as the author thinks is that when your life is anchored in such ephemeral belief system, not sure it's possible to actually deal with the world as it exists, which is really, really badly.

Very painful reading. Good thing is, never have to do it again.

[Pat | _chaoticbooknook]

DNF around 25%. The premise was admittedly quite interesting, and I enjoyed how the vignettes within the chapters, moving us back and forth through time to paint a picture of Huntman’s upbringing, family, and her desire to reconnect with her mother. I can’t tell whether the writing simply wasn’t for me or perhaps I wasn’t in the right headspace for it.

Many thanks to Page One M for sending me a finished copy of this book!

[Annie McGreevy · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're a woman looking to make sense of the death of your mother, or even just your womanhood, this book is for you. Huntman is an incredible writer, but even more impressive is her choice to tell the real, unfettered truth. I've never read a depiction of parents so sober and true. The writing is poetic and lucid. I read a lot of literary fiction and non-fiction, and the endings are rarely so moving a crescendo as Huntman pulls off. Definitely recommend reading.

[Maria Miriti · Rating 5 out of 5]

My Mother in Havana is a story of love, magic and becoming. A daughter's love for her deceased mother leads to a spiritual journey that includes Afro Cuban representations and rituals of the feminine. Along the way we learn that in grief, we do not lose love, and in loving, we can continue to grow into fulness.