My View: The book is kind of like The Radioactive Boy Scout in that it written in a news-report fashion to get someone's story across– a story that affects many people and they never knew it. The four generations of real Cuban women portrayed through the mist of Fidel Castro's revolution in Havana Dreams are all very differently affected:
First Generation: The revolution stole Doña Natica's most beloved, beautiful Havana.
Second Generation: Naty Revuelta, Doña Natica's gorgeous, rebellious (and married) daughter, had an affair with el comandante. Her husband took their legitimate daughter, Nina, to the United States to escape a nationalization of his medical practice. She was left in Havana with her and Fidel's daughter, Alina.
Third Generation: Nina was happily married and living in Illinois, having escaped most entanglement with all things Cuban. Alina had taken on the unofficial role of Fidel Castro's (unacknowledged) daughter. After tiring of the Cuban media circuit, she escaped the island and headed for the wider scope of American paparazzi. Never finding an identity further than Castro's Daughter, she wandered sadly through life, using and being used.
Fourth Generation: Alina's daughter, Mumín, traveled to the US and tried living an average life. Her commitment-phobe mother left her, and she lived with Naty, who grasped at her last chance of real motherhood (having let the other two opportunities fail).
Wikipedia Link: N/A
General Information:
Method of Reading:
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Personally owned paperback novel, 234 pages
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Dates of Reading:
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June 10, 2010-June 14, 2010
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Author:
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Wendy Gimbel
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Publication Year:
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1998
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Recommended To:
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History fans. It's especially interesting for Latin American studies students. It was taken off of the reading list for my LatAm class, I'm sure for time management reasons, but it's a great tie-in and really livens up the history.
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Quotes:
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Movie?
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No, but they could make one Coco Before Chanel-style.
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Your Bibliomaniac
Bibliographic info:
Gimbel, Wendy. Havana Dreams: A Story of Cuba. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1998. Print.
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