Take Me With You

by Carlos Frías

Carlos Frías, an award-winning journalist and the American-born son of Cuban exiles, grew up hearing about his parents' homeland only in parables. Their Cuba, the one they left behind four decades ago, was ethereal. It existed, for him, only in their anecdotes, and in the family that remained in Cuba -- merely ghosts on the other end of a telephone.

Until Fidel Castro fell ill.

Sent to Cuba by his newspaper as the country began closing to foreign journalists in August 2006, Frías begins the secret journey of a lifetime -- twelve days in the land of his parents. That experience led to this evocative, spectacular, and unforgettable memoir.

Take Me With You is written through the unique eyes of a first-generation Cuban-American seeing the forbidden country of his ancestry for the first time. Take Me With You provides a fresh view of Cuba, devoid of overt political commentary, focusing instead on the gritty, tangible lives of the people living in Castro's Cuba. Frías takes in the island nation of today and attempts to reconstruct what the past was like for his parents, retracing their footsteps, searching for his roots, and discovering his history. The book creates lasting and unexpected ripples within his family on both sides of the Florida Straits -- and on the author himself.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography Memoir, Biography, History

304 pages, Hardcover

First published November 18, 2008

About the author

Carlos is a bilingual writer, a journalist of nearly 30 years and author of the award-winning memoir published by Simon & Schuster, "Take Me With You: A Secret Search for Family in a Forbidden Cuba."

He's traded dirty jokes with Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal, fed croquetas to Nobel Peace Prize nominee José Andrés and dodged Cuban soldiers on the island while on assignment.

Miami is his hometown and his muse.

Contact him at carlosfrias.com.

Reviews

[Shawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

In my early 30s I lived for awhile in Miami not far from Calle Ocho and now I live in Tampa (also a Cuban enclave) and for years I have heard stories of Cuba...stories in bits and pieces about communism repression, ration cards, Old American cars, forced attendance at demonstrations, Comité de Defensa de la Revolución(CDR), flights of freedom, Elian González, Che Guevara, the beaches, hardship and poverty as well as some pretty heart-wrenching immigration stories. However, the stories have always come out in bits and pieces and I always felt I was missing so much of the story. While I yearned for a more complete story, I understood it was a delicate subject and have refrained from asking too many questions.

Well, Carlos Frias in his memoir really painted a whole and complete story about Cuba, the Cuban experience, as well as the Cuban American experience. An amazing story and a great insight. It was also a wonderful read.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book. Carlos Frias is a journalist in South Florida. Born in the United States, his parents, aunts, and uncles are emigrated from Cuba after Castro took over. So Cuba, for him, was a land of stories, fables, and dreams. When Castro took ill, Frias was sent by his newspaper to the island for 12 days. During the trip, Frias was overcome by emotion as he met for the first time, people who were important to his family. My prayer is that he and his parents are able to freely visit Cuba in the near future. The descriptions of the way of life of the average Cuban citizen were grim, especially when contrasted with the way that tourists and members of the party and government are able to live. A really interesting book.

[Vilo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Carlos Frias writes about visiting Cuba just as Castro got ill. Two things his passport did not reveal. 1) He was a journalist. 2) His parents were Cuban refugees. This is an inside look at life in Cuba now and 50 years ago. The power and self discovery of gathering your family's history is evident. Also interesting is his contrasting his moral code with that of his father's generation.

[Pat · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great true story about growing up in Cuba. Sad, funny, and an insight into how Cuba still is since the 60's.

[Leslie Poulos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating look at Cuba and the effect of the Revolution on one family.

[Amy Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a beautiful book. By the time I crashed into the last few chapters, I was weeping along with Carlos and his family.

[Carol Bakker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Carlos Eire (Waiting for Snow in Havana) placed Cuba on my map and in my heart. Carlos Frías tamped it securely there. Both stories, roughly forty years apart, linger in my thoughts.

When Frías, an American born to Cuban emigrants, is sent to Cuba as a journalist, he goes in order to meet aunts, uncles and cousins and learn more about his parents' childhood. Shot through this memoir are yearning, delight, regrets, grief and hunger for wholeness.

So many pieces of my family puzzle are fitting together to form a richer portrait. For Cuban-Americans of my generation, these pictures, this knowledge, fills a void I feel few others understand. There are no such things as family heirlooms for us. We are children of a lost generation, for whom memories are priceless artifacts.

I would like to give this book to every tourist who revels in the glamor of Havana's colonial architecture, frosty mojitos, and vintage cars.

Several motifs emerge: Cuban hospitality, coffee (the only thing they can offer freely), premarital affairs and their fallout, peeling paint, poverty, the duality of life under communism, memories, hope under oppression, impossible choices.

I hope Carlos Frías keeps writing; I would gladly read another book by him.

[Pamela Mansfield-loomis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I accidentally got this book instead of another by the same title when I ordered it from the library. It was a happy accident as I learned so much more about Cuba than I thought I knew. It's a personal account of how people live there now, and how difficult it is for families to stay connected although just 90 miles apart. An interesting look into a personal situation with characters that come to life on the page.

[Jane Lippincott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well worth reading particularly for those with Cuban ancestors...Such a true statement...
“So many pieces of my family puzzle are fitting together to form a richer portrait. For Cuban-Americans of my generation, these pictures, this knowledge, fills a void I feel few others can understand. There are no such things as family heirlooms for us. We are children of a lost generation, for whom memories are priceless artifacts.”

[Regla M. Monkan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paradise Lost

I left Cuba in 1968 and have never returned. This excellent book showed in vivid details why I will never return. Thank you for taking me back through your writing. You're very brave.

[Ingrid White · Rating 4 out of 5]

Autobiography about a man searching for his Cuban history. Very well done.

[Dianne Maddox · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can I give a book six stars? I loved, loved, loved this book. This true story is written depicted. I felt as if I was visiting Cuba as I read this book.

[T · Rating 4 out of 5]

NOT BAD

Surprised a writer from the ultra liberal Palm Beach Pravda could write an anti communist book.
Really shows how bad things are in Cuba. Nothing like the liberal propaganda from the Hollywood elite. Just a little long and a little over written.

[Bookworm · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can't remember how i came across this book specifically (I think Cuba must have been in the news), but I thought it was finally time to take it off my to-read shelf, especially as it is close to the end of National Hispanic Heritage Month in the United States. Frías is a US-born journalist of Cuban exiles, who only knew of the country from the stories of his families, speaking to his relations in Cuba only via telephone, thinking he might never meet them. But as his job as a journalist takes him to the country that he has no experience with in 2006, Frías takes the reader along with him.

Frías travels to Cuba to see a country that he only knows through the views of others and the media, looks for his family, and comes to terms with his ancestry and how and why he was in the US and why Cuba's status was that way at the time. As you can imagine it is not easy with just the emotional burden of it all.

Overall I thought it was a mixed bag. Frías was there for a story and he only spent 10 days there. Not really enough time to get a chance to really learn deeply, let alone absorb the history and emotional context of his visit, etc. As with many books by journalists go, I thought it was incredibly dull as a memoir, although it will certainly hold weight for others with similar histories and stories.

I do think it is very important and it is certainly not something I have much experience or knowledge of, so that could be part of my reaction. This was also from 2008, so I'd be curious if Frías ever makes/made another journey and whether he finds things have changed, the differences between visits, any thoughts between then and now, etc.

Important for historical reasons and again, definitely for people who might have similar experiences but ultimately not for me. I bought this because it wasn't available via the library and would have preferred to borrow it but as it also took me years to finally read it this was probably for the best.

[Sharon M Bressen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Take Me With You
By Carlos Frias

While attending the St. Petersburg Times Festival of Reading at USF, St. Petersburg, FL this October, I found Carlos FrÃas reading from his book “Take Me With You”. In the audience were his wife, Christy and three charming daughters Elise, Amelia and Catalina. His words caught my attention and I purchased his book.

This is a poignant story of a journalist of Cuban heritage, who travels to Cuba on assignment by The Palm Beach Post to report on the story of the health condition of Fidel Castro in August, 2006. To cross the ninety miles that separate United States and Cuba, he flies by way of Mexico.

We follow a man with close family ties that take a monumental journey back to the birthplace of his parents. To a land he has heard about through many stories shared by his father, mother, aunts, uncles and other family friends.

Nothing prepares Carlos for the living conditions in Cuba. Things he takes for granted in the US are luxuries or unavailable in Cuba. You will never look at a toilet in the same light after reading this book.

I have found as a family historian myself; you never know what you will find when you start asking questions, visiting family friends, cemeteries, churches or schools. Carlos did make some unexpected discoveries about his family…all families have some secrets.

The book is so compelling, joyful and heartbreaking at the same time. The book ends on an uplifting note of promise for the future. It is one of the most emotional books I have had the pleasure to read in a long time. The FrÃas family continues to honor all birthdays, occasions (quinces) and events that need a get-together to celebrate. They are Family!

Buy this book and read about the comfort of family love and learn about the current state of affairs of our neighbor, Cuba.

[Carmen Amato · Rating 5 out of 5]

My basis of understanding Cuba comes from a grad school friend whose parents fled Castro's revolution, leaving behind everything. The mother, who was pregnant at the time, never really got over what had happened and her later years were full of emotional pain. So it was with this family in mind that I picked up the book during a memoir phase and it turned out to be one of the best contemporary memoirs I have read.

A Miami-based journalist, Frías recounts his own 2006 trip to Cuba to cover the political scene, which allowed him to trace his father’s life there before the revolution. Frías writes simply and smoothly and his descriptions put the reader right into today’s Cuba, with its decayed buildings, endless scrabbling for the basics, and sense of waiting for it all to end. Although the book moves around between the author’s family in Miami, his father’s middle-class life in pre-revolution Cuba, and the author’s own experiences in today’s Cuba, the reader never gets confused. Frías is able to show us real people and how their lives were damaged by Cuba’s revolution, including that of his father and the family members who stayed behind and are now trapped in Cuba's poverty.

This book is recommended for anyone interested in Cuba, for those who like to read memoirs, or anyone contemplating writing a memoir. This is how it is done.

[el_quijote · Rating 3 out of 5]

Carlos Frias is a Cuban-American living in South Florida. He is the son of Cuban émigrés that left Cuba in the years after Fidel Castro took power in 1959. Carlos was born in America and only knows Cuba from the memories that his extended family have told him over the years.

Mr. Frias works as a sportswriter for a Florida newspaper and when Fidel Castro falls ill in 2006 the paper sends him to Cuba to report what he can. “Take Me With You” is the personal story of what the young Mr. Frias finds in Cuba.

The book succeeds on two levels. It is both an observation of the lives of ordinary Cubans today and a deeply personal memoir of his extended family, the family that came to America and the family that stayed behind in Cuba. It is this reconciliation of what was and what is, and how it is remembered by the different family members that makes this book so readable and alive.

When Carlos returns to Florida and has to tell his family what he saw and found in Cuba. They have to face reality. As they were making a new life in America the family they left behind was also evolving. It is the story of the how the Frias family faces this sometimes painful reality that showcases their humanity and compassion. Carlos Frias does have a family to be proud.

[Bonnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an incredible book! If you have even a passing interest in what life is like in Cuba today, read this book. Carlos Frias goes to from Miama to Cuba (via Cancun) to visit the families of his Cuban-refugee parents. He is an undercover journalist taking notes and pictures and interviewing family members in and around Havana. In the US, we hear about the free medical care in Cuba, but what we don't hear is that people must take their own sheets and gowns if they want clean ones at the hospital. One of Carlos' cousins has asthma and, since inhalers aren't available, she goes to the hospital and uses the community nebulizer there. The inequality of living conditions between party members and non-members is astounding. This is one of the most eye-opening books I've read in years.

[Sheila Friedman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this memoir. Frias takes you off the tourist's "yellow brick road" and into the heart of a very broken nation. Of all the books I have read since returning from Cuba, this one opened the curtain the most onto a stage in which absolutely nothing is as it seems. He describes what goes on in Cuban households on a daily basis. It is incredibly sad to know what these poor people must endure just to survive. I highly recommend this if you want to try to understand the current situation in Cuba.

[Patricia Sanders · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful memoir about a Cuban American man that reconnects with his family's cuban roots. This takes us inside the real Cuba and also shows us the importance of family. A beautiful story to treasure.

[Mafemrb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Carlos Frias definitely took me to the more poignant and emotional Cuba with this book. I liked it because his writing focused on human interest stories, very personal and real, without the usual political commentary that is so common in most of the books that I've read about Cuba.

[Edith Andersen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chose this book as a quick summer read. It was better than that. Unexpected relationship of two boys with a stranger who happens to stop at their father's service station for repairs. I give it a 3.5.

[Hugh · Rating 2 out of 5]

A good look at daily life in Cuba. Would have been nice if something happened somewhere in the book. Anything, really

[Jocelyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Focuses mostly on the author's family living in Cuba. Also provides insight into the current state of Cuba, much of which is poor and rundown.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author brought you along on his first trip to Cuba, the country of his family. Current day and the author lives in Miami.

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Carlos is a good writer and he had a compelling story to tell. Read it.

[Odalys · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me some time to get into it..... but towards the middle I was crying like a baby. Very good!!!!

[Bob Schuemann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read after my recent trip to Cuba