The Havana Habit

by Gustavo Perez Firmat

Cuba, an island 750 miles long, with a population of about 11 million, lies less than 100 miles off the U.S. coast. Yet the island?s influences on America?s cultural imagination are extensive and deeply ingrained.In the engaging and wide-ranging Havana Habit, writer and scholar Gustavo Pérez Firmat probes the importance of Havana, and of greater Cuba, in the cultural history of the United States. Through books, advertisements, travel guides, films, and music, he demonstrates the influence of the island on almost two centuries of American life. From John Quincy Adams?s comparison of Cuba to an apple ready to drop into America?s lap, to the latest episodes in the lives of the ?comic comandantes and exotic exiles,? and to such notable Cuban exports as the rumba and the mambo, cigars and mojitos, the Cuba that emerges from these pages is a locale that Cubans and Americans have jointly imagined and inhabited. The Havana Habit deftly illustrates what makes Cu

Genres: History, Nonfiction

256 pages, Hardcover

First published October 26, 2010

About the author

Gustavo Pérez Firmat was born in Havana, Cuba, and raised in Miami, Florida.
He is best known for his memoir, Next Year in Cuba, available in Spanish as El año que viene estamos en Cuba, and for Life on the Hyphen, a study of Cuban-American culture, also available in Spanish as Vidas en vilo. His most recent book, A Cuban in Mayberry, is an affectionate and personal look at one of America’s best-loved TV shows, “The Andy Griffith Show.” He has also published several collections of poetry in English and Spanish—Scar Tissue, Cincuenta lecciones de exilio y desexilio, Bilingual Blues, Equivocaciones, Carolina Cuban—and a novel, Anything but Love. His books of literary and cultural criticism include The Havana Habit, Tongue Ties, The Cuban Condition, Literature and Liminality and Idle Fictions. He divides his time between New York City and Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Reviews

[Ben Batchelder · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Havana Habit comes at an apropos time. Castro helped us to kick the slinky Havana habit back in the 60's but it looks like it’s back: Cuba out of the closet.

Colombia professor and poet Gustavo Pérez Firmat marshals an impressive compendium of Cuba’s outsized cultural impact on the Neighbor to the North, especially in music, dance, film, and boozing. The watershed event was Prohibition, when flowing liquor and the first flights facilitated hangovers there. Cuba’s unofficial tourist slogan was “Have one in Havana!”, creating a boom in “alcoholidays” and a taste for Cuban run.

Although not a fan of the opening to Cuba – I personally avoid pleasure trips whose dollars directly line dictator’s pockets, not to mention the current thaw was not brought on by any opening of Cuba – I was asked to moderate the book at my book club at the Wolfsonian Museum in Miami Beach. The museum’s then-exhibition “Promising Paradise: Cuban Allure, American Seduction” was the motive for the book choice, and, as usual for the Wolf, delineates a cultural relation through delightful graphical trends. Propagandistic art is a Wolf specialty; seeing so many first half of the 20th century posters and magazine covers elucidate that seduction is a revelation.

Pérez Firmat’s work includes a number of pictural examples as well – for me, the most interesting of the cultural hangovers – but goes heavily into Hollywood Reporter-like summaries of movies and television programs (“I Love Lucy,” among them) that almost made me reach for a drink.
Instead, I brought several questions to the discussion which – the moderator’s doit de seigneur – were of most interest to me. The first was:

-Expand on how Cuba came to represent all of Latin America in the US popular imagination?

For Pérez Firmat relates in convincing detail that for pre-WWII Americans, Cuba occupied such a large place in the collective imagination that it represented all of Spanish America. Indeed, in terms of music/dance fads, Cuba’s Rumba, Mambo, and Cha Cha Cha movements were the only Latin trends to go continental – until the Brazilian Bossa Nova washed ashore in the 1960's (when Cuba went into a cultural coma).

Pérez Firmat also convincingly details how many of the Cuban cultural landfalls in America were about an earlier Cuba, frozen in a bygone tropical time. This led me to mischievously add the question:

-How has nostalgia for an “old Cuba” frozen the country’s image, even for the current re-opening?

My book club, alas, was uniformly unhappy with the book, finding it academic, bereft of a compelling thesis, and – strangely for a Cuban-American author – devoid of any political discussion that could further explain US-Cuban ties (or lack of them). I hastened to point out that Pérez Firmat writes well, if breezily (there is little substance to the book), and is often funny, with droll anecdotes.

This lead me to guess that the book was compiled after teaching the subject to college students long enough to have come up with pithy and amusing asides. A new member to our group, a well-known Cuban exile painter who spent most of his career in Paris, knows the author and, to the best of his knowledge, confirmed my thesis.

I ended my modest discussion leadership with my favorite quote from the book, which mirrors my own feeling of betwixt and between brought on by having lived decades outside the US in Brazil. Desi Arnold sings these verses in an "I Love Lucy" show:

I have two places to hang my hat
two verandas in which to snooze,
and in two languages a welcome mat:
say hello to my shoes.

So will the US develop another, less innocent Havana Habit or the reverse? It depends which shoe falls.

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book useful for understanding the creation of Havana in the American imagination. It is full of excellent references to literature and music. Throughout the text it expertly balances the difficult task of meeting academic requirements while also appealing to a wider readership. For more, see Perez Jr and Cuba in the American Imagination.

[Ella · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m always quite fond of these sorts of cultural histories, and while this wasn’t groundbreaking or anything, it certainly wasn’t the worst way to spend an afternoon. It did feel oddly detached though.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Casual readers may find this a bit too academic in style and presentation, but it is right down my preferences in interest and experience, as I am a social historian with an interest in Cuban history. The authors delves into the changing views of our island neighbor to the south by using literature, film, music, dance, television, travel, politics, immigration, trade (such as rum and cigars). Cuba has been deeply ingrained in the American experience, coveted, courted, exploited, seduced, reviled, feared, and romanticized. And we are possibly in line for another interesting chapter as the Castro's reign winds down and a potential new relationship develops.

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

The United States has been coveting Cuba since the early 1800s. There have been failed attempts to purchase, attempts to annex, and invasions of Cuba. As time passed, however, Cuba successfully invaded the United States...culturally through music with the rumba and mambo, with films to numerous to mention, replacing pipes with cigars, introducing Bacardi, daiquiris, the Cuba Libre and cocktails like the mojito. Oh, yes, I must not forget Lucy and Desi. This eye opening read will make you very aware of Cuba's great influence on the U.S.

[Paige]

Great social history of Cuban American relations as seen through tourism, movies and music.

[Amy]

NPR

[Christopher Hull · Rating 4 out of 5]

Succinct writing