Find Me in Havana Quotes

“When we were dating, he found my short skirts and tight sweaters attractive; after marriage they were revealing and inappropriate. It angered him that I kissed other men on-screen or looked seductively into the audience at my concerts.”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“Rebel soldiers attacking and violating my sisters and niece doesn’t go well with duck and red wine.”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“He was a father who related to his children by dominating them. I knew only to fear him, to wait in a cold sweat for either punishment or approval. I have no idea what it would have been like to know him as an adult.”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“The soldier who raped Danita has returned many times. It doesn’t look like rape anymore. When he’s done eating our food, Danita walks up the stairs ahead of him with mock complicity. Danita the Mighty. Danita the Merciless. She made a deal, she told me, but I’m not to say a word to our sisters or Mamá. “It’s just sex, and he’s promised me he’ll keep the others off Oneila’s girls. They’re too young. They’d never recover. At least he’s not violent.”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“I know this is ridiculous. We are too young. We are girls. We will shoot no one. But I play the game. This is truth and dare rolled into one.”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“Let’s promise we’ll never be tiresome or strict or boring like Oneila. We’ll be spirited and interesting and beautiful until we die.”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“But now that I am here, I feel betrayed by the US. They are supposedly an ally and neighbor to Cuba. How could they let it go this far?”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“Haven’t you heard? Fidel and his brother Raul are decent men. They don’t go around killing women and children. They want what is best for the people.”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“love singing, Nina, and those Vegas hotels are no place for a young girl.” I take a sip of my drink, sweet and thick and so cold it hurts my teeth. “Drink up, and stop talking nonsense.”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“What has he done for the people? Allied with the US, profited off the sugar plantations, taken away political liberties of the people he claims to have come from. The people were bound to fight back. How can your father not think he is in danger?”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“Maybe saving his client and her daughter is the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to him.”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“Kids getting in the way of business negotiations annoy him, and grumpy old men who tell me to stop talking annoy me, so we’re clear with each other.”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“It is a promise no parent should ever make.”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“Men you cannot control,” she’d said, “but your talent is yours. If you fail at that, you have only yourself to blame.” Not entirely true, I think now.”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“Rubenia pulls away, nodding shyly and giving me a wet kiss on the cheek, her lips velvety soft. I can’t think of anyone back home who would take in strangers, clothe them and feed them and kiss them when they leave.”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“That means my career is over? I can’t sing because I am a mother and wife? That is ridiculous! We never discussed this. You said I would sing here.”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“What I think, when you hang up, is that I have ruined your marriage and that you will marry again, and this time you will make sure I am never around.”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“He will kick Alfonso out of this house. His daughter’s safety is in jeopardy, and if you are too pigheaded to see that, Chu Chu will make you.”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“With our accent and dark hair, it doesn’t matter where we come from...Cuba, Spain, Peru...it’s all just México to them.” “I gave up correcting people that I’m Cuban long ago,” I told her once, as we commiserated the ache of betraying our heritage with a shrug and a laugh.”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“They demand economic and political reform and then go and use the same violence and corruption as Machado’s regime to get it. It’s hypocritical. Politics in this country has always been about ascendency. There’s no heroics in it. No national unity, no purpose. It’s just men vying for power.”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“Machado’s closed the high schools as well as the university. Students and professors have been beaten and arrested. They’re left with no choice but to fight back. Armed action is the only thing that’s ever proved successful at ridding this country of corrupt power.”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“This is no different. It’s the oppressed fighting back just as they did with Spain. Machado changed the constitution so he could maintain power. Por amor de Cristo, he ran for reelection against himself!”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“was five years old when I saw my father quartered in front of me for not hailing to the king of Spain.”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“I don’t know. I haven’t made up my mind yet. These are our people. They have a right to fair wages, fair labor, education, a modern university.”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“This is familiar to me. I watched men challenge you your whole life, each one of your four husbands, in their own way, pushing you to the edge. Despite your effort to understand them, to please them, it was, in the end, your unwillingness to be controlled or possessed that got you killed.”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“When I returned home, my father sat me down and said that family is not a choice. They are our bones and our blood, our past and our future. 'It's not always good,' he told me, 'but it's always importance. Pain and love and laughter and anger go together.”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana