We'll Always Have Havana
We'll Always Have Havana

Author: George Buford

Publisher: Xlibris Corporation

Published: 2011-03-29

Total Pages: 156

ISBN-13: 1456897632

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Havana in December to 1958 was city on the brink of revolution, but it glittered on the surface. Over the previous twenty-five years it had become the Las Vegas of the Caribbean, made so by the Mafia money that supported a corrupt and oppressive regime. Into this explosive environment came Lila Corona and her gang of jewel thieves, determined to make the greatest heist ever. She had been hired by a jewelry company to steal their own jewels and smuggle them out of the country. She encountered Chester Yellowcat, an FBI agent who had met her before, knew that she was a thief, but had never been able to prove anything. Lila spotted him tailing her, confronted him, and started a relationship with him. As the head of the FBI section at the American embassy, Chester was involved with the ambassador in finding a way to get Batista, the Mafia-supported dictator, to leave the country. To get information to pressure Batista, Chester was obliged to hire Lila and her gang to break into the National Bank to photograph information about the location of Batista’s overseas financial holdings. Lila did, and this led to her becoming Chester’s lover. Because the jewelry heist involved far more jewels than she had expected, Lila was obliged to make a deal with one of the leaders of the revolution to use his resources to smuggle the jewels to Miami. Lila and her gang left the country after the heist. Chester wanted her to go, because he was afraid to have her there during the revolutionary takeover, which he knew was coming soon. The takeover came on the morning of the New Year, when Batista, the dictator, fled the country. After a brief period of tension, Chester and the other Americans at the embassy began sorting things out. By early spring, Chester was retired and staying at a hotel at Sarasota, on the Gulf Coast of Florida. He had asked a waiter to bring him a beer. When the waiter brought him two beers, he turned around to say something to the waiter, but discovered instead—Lila.

Havana Bay
Havana Bay

Author: Martin Cruz Smith

Publisher: Random House Digital, Inc.

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 0345390458

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A novel about the murder of a Russian man in Cuba.

Cuba and Its Music
Cuba and Its Music

Author: Ned Sublette

Publisher: Chicago Review Press

Published: 2007-02

Total Pages: 690

ISBN-13: 1569764204

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This entertaining history of Cuba and its music begins with the collision of Spain and Africa and continues through the era of Miguelito Valdes, Arsenio Rodriguez, Benny More, and Perez Prado. It offers a behind-the-scenes examination of music from a Cuban point of view, unearthing surprising, provocative connections and making the case that Cuba was fundamental to the evolution of music in the New World. The ways in which the music of black slaves transformed 16th-century Europe, how the "claves" appeared, and how Cuban music influenced ragtime, jazz, and rhythm and blues are revealed. Music lovers will follow this journey from Andalucia, the Congo, the Calabar, Dahomey, and Yorubaland via Cuba to Mexico, Puerto Rico, Saint-Domingue, New Orleans, New York, and Miami. The music is placed in a historical context that considers the complexities of the slave trade; Cuba's relationship to the United States; its revolutionary political traditions; the music of Santeria, Palo, Abakua, and Vodu; and much more.

Good-bye, Havana! Hola, New York!
Good-bye, Havana! Hola, New York!

Author: Edie Colon

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2011-08-23

Total Pages: 36

ISBN-13: 1442434848

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“Lush, evocative.” —School Library Journal “Raul Colón’s art…has a sweetness that’s sometimes tinged with anxiety, sometimes with hope. A fine addition to books about the immigrant experience.” —Booklist “This gentle look back at an important time will also speak to contemporary children whose families are starting anew in the United States.” —Publishers Weekly When five year old Gabriella hears talk of Castro and something called revolution in her home in Cuba, she doesn't understand. Then when her parents leave suddenly and she remains with her grandparents, life isn't the same. Soon the day comes when she goes to live with her parents in a new place called the Bronx. It isn't warm like Havana, and there is traffic not the ocean outside her window. Their life is different—it snows in the winter and the food at school is hot dogs and macaroni. What will it take for the Bronx to feel like home?

Next Year in Havana
Next Year in Havana

Author: Chanel Cleeton

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2021-03

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 0593337204

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A HELLO SUNSHINE x REESE WITHERSPOON BOOK CLUB PICK "A beautiful novel that's full of forbidden passions, family secrets and a lot of courage and sacrifice."--Reese Witherspoon After the death of her beloved grandmother, a Cuban-American woman travels to Havana, where she discovers the roots of her identity--and unearths a family secret hidden since the revolution... Havana, 1958. The daughter of a sugar baron, nineteen-year-old Elisa Perez is part of Cuba's high society, where she is largely sheltered from the country's growing political unrest--until she embarks on a clandestine affair with a passionate revolutionary... Miami, 2017. Freelance writer Marisol Ferrera grew up hearing romantic stories of Cuba from her late grandmother Elisa, who was forced to flee with her family during the revolution. Elisa's last wish was for Marisol to scatter her ashes in the country of her birth. Arriving in Havana, Marisol comes face-to-face with the contrast of Cuba's tropical, timeless beauty and its perilous political climate. When more family history comes to light and Marisol finds herself attracted to a man with secrets of his own, she'll need the lessons of her grandmother's past to help her understand the true meaning of courage.

Waiting For Snow In Havana
Waiting For Snow In Havana

Author: Carlos Eire

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2012-12-11

Total Pages: 579

ISBN-13: 147110835X

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A childhood in a privileged household in 1950s Havana was joyous and cruel, like any other-but with certain differences. The neighbour's monkey was liable to escape and run across your roof. Surfing was conducted by driving cars across the breakwater. Lizards and firecrackers made frequent contact. Carlos Eire's childhood was a little different from most. His father was convinced he had been Louis XVI in a past life. At school, classmates with fathers in the Batista government were attended by chauffeurs and bodyguards. At a home crammed with artifacts and paintings, portraits of Jesus spoke to him in dreams and nightmares. Then, in January 1959, the world changes: Batista is suddenly gone, a cigar-smoking guerrilla has taken his place, and Christmas is cancelled. The echo of firing squads is everywhere. And, one by one, the author's schoolmates begin to disappear-spirited away to the United States. Carlos will end up there himself, without his parents, never to see his father again. Narrated with the urgency of a confession, WAITING FOR SNOW IN HAVANA is both an ode to a paradise lost and an exorcism. More than that, it captures the terrible beauty of those times in our lives when we are certain we have died-and then are somehow, miraculously, reborn.

Dreaming in Cuban
Dreaming in Cuban

Author: Cristina García

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Published: 2011-06-08

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 0307798003

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“Impressive . . . [Cristina García’s] story is about three generations of Cuban women and their separate responses to the revolution. Her special feat is to tell it in a style as warm and gentle as the ‘sustaining aromas of vanilla and almond,’ as rhythmic as the music of Beny Moré.”—Time Cristina García’s acclaimed book is the haunting, bittersweet story of a family experiencing a country’s revolution and the revelations that follow. The lives of Celia del Pino and her husband, daughters, and grandchildren mirror the magical realism of Cuba itself, a landscape of beauty and poverty, idealism and corruption. Dreaming in Cuban is “a work that possesses both the intimacy of a Chekov story and the hallucinatory magic of a novel by Gabriel García Márquez” (The New York Times). In celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the novel’s original publication, this edition features a new introduction by the author. Praise for Dreaming in Cuban “Remarkable . . . an intricate weaving of dramatic events with the supernatural and the cosmic . . . evocative and lush.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Captures the pain, the distance, the frustrations and the dreams of these family dramas with a vivid, poetic prose.”—The Washington Post “Brilliant . . . With tremendous skill, passion and humor, García just may have written the definitive story of Cuban exiles and some of those they left behind.”—The Denver Post

The History of Havana
The History of Havana

Author: Dick Cluster

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2008-04-29

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 9780230603974

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This is the first comprehensive history of the culturally diverse city, and the first to be co-authored by a Cuban and an American. Beginning with the founding of Havana in 1519, Cluster and Hernández explore the making of the city and its people through revolutions, art, economic development and the interplay of diverse societies. The authors bring together conflicting images of a city that melds cultures and influences to create an identity that is distinctly Cuban.

Our Man Down in Havana
Our Man Down in Havana

Author: Christopher Hull

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2019-03-05

Total Pages: 424

ISBN-13: 164313101X

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When U.S. immigration authorities deported Graham Greene from Puerto Rico in 1954, the British author made an unplanned visit to Havana and the former MI6 officer had stumbled upon the ideal setting for a comic espionage story. Three years later, he returned in the midst of Castro’s guerrilla insurgency against a U.S.-backed dictator to begin writing his iconic novel Our Man in Havana. Twelve weeks after its publication, in January 1959, the Cuban Revolution triumphed, soon transforming a capitalist playground into a communist stronghold.Combining biography, history, politics, and a measure of psychoanalysis, Our Man Down in Havana investigates the real story behind Greene’s fiction. It includes his many visits to a pleasure island that became a revolutionary island, turning his chance involvement into a political commitment. His Cuban novel describes an amateur agent who dupes his intelligence chiefs with invented reports about “concrete platforms and unidentifiable pieces of giant machinery.” With eerie prescience, Greene’s satirical tale had foretold the Cold War’s most perilous episode, the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

The Pride of Havana
The Pride of Havana

Author: Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2001-05-24

Total Pages: 513

ISBN-13: 0195349172

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From the first amateur leagues of the 1860s to the exploits of Livan and Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez, here is the definitive history of baseball in Cuba. Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria expertly traces the arc of the game, intertwining its heroes and their stories with the politics, music, dance, and literature of the Cuban people. What emerges is more than a story of balls and strikes, but a richly detailed history of Cuba told from the unique cultural perch of the baseball diamond. Filling a void created by Cuba's rejection of bullfighting and Spanish hegemony, baseball quickly became a crucial stitch in the complex social fabric of the island. By the early 1940s Cuba had become major conduit in spreading the game throughout Latin America, and a proving ground for some of the greatest talent in all of baseball, where white major leaguers and Negro League players from the U.S. all competed on the same fields with the cream of Latin talent. Indeed, readers will be introduced to several black ballplayers of Afro-Cuban descent who played in the Major Leagues before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier once and for all. Often dramatic, and always culturally resonant, Gonzalez Echevarria's narrative expertly lays open the paradox of fierce Cuban independence from the U.S. with Cuba's love for our national pastime. It shows how Fidel Castro cannily associated himself with the sport for patriotic p.r.--and reveals that his supposed baseball talent is purely mythical. Based on extensive primary research and a wealth of interviews, the colorful, often dramatic anecdotes and stories in this distinguished book comprise the most comprehensive history of Cuban baseball yet published and ultimately adds a vital lost chapter to the history of baseball in the U.S.