Blessed by Thunder: Memoir of a Cuban Girlhood [Hardcover]

Flor Fernandez-Barrios (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1998

Born in Cuba in the 1950s, the author was a child when revolution swept her homeland and Fidel Castro came to power. While her family suffered injustice and austerity after their plantation was seized, her grandmother and Afro-Cuban nanny remained strong. They taught her the healing wisdom of curanderismo and the magical beliefs of Santeria. This memoir offers a heartfelt view of Cuba's history and culture.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

On the surface, this beautifully written memoir is riveting simply because it revolves around a young girl growing up in Cuba during the Communist revolution. When Flor Fernandez Barrios's parents consider fleeing Castro's regime, they are labeled gusanos, or traitors. Neighbors shame and taunt them. At the age of 10, Barrios is sent away along with thousands of other children to a work camp, where she is forced into hard labor, picking tobacco and sugar cane to offset the U.S. embargo.

Barrios could have relied upon the dramatic details of her life in Cuba to make this memoir fascinating. But instead she dared to mine the depths of the cultural and spiritual story beneath the surface. Like Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits, this is a tale of magic, spirits, and family devotion. Throughout her childhood, Barrios's mystical grandmothers, as well as her Afro-Cuban nanny, teach her the names and stories of their indigenous spirits, and their secret spells of healing. It is these Cuban spirits who thunder and comfort Barrios during her shameful punishments at work camp. Years later, the memories of her Cuban mentors and healing spirits help the exiled Barrios find her place in a new country. This is a highly recommended story of Cuban life, spiritual heritage, and human fortitude. --Gail Hudson

From Publishers Weekly

Offering a striking child's-eye view of the Cuban revolution, Barrios begins her memoir with her birth during a hurricane, which convinced her curandera grandmother that the child would be a spiritual healer like her. When Barrios was a year old, Castro's 1956 Radio Rebelde broadcasts disrupted evening domino games in her hometown in Santa Clara province. In 1958, her father was falsely accused of being a Castro sympathizer and detained. Though he was returned to his family, their lives were soon upended: "agrarian reform" forced her grandfather to give his land to Castro's government and Barrios was sent to the countryside for two years as a child laborer. To win a weekend pass to visit her parents, she picked tobacco until her fingers were bloody. "All I knew was that the word communist meant lack of freedom," she writes. Though Castro had promised racial equality (Barrios was nicknamed negrita, "little black one," by her grandmother), Barrios did not find that much changed. When her father was later sent to a labor camp as an anti-Castro gusano (a slang term meaning "maggot"), he shared frogs and fish with guards who were as hungry as he was. A decade later, Barrios's family was allowed to emigrate to Los Angeles, where most thought she was Mexican. She initially sought acceptance by "toning down the bright colors of her Cuban culture," but after completing a UCLA pre-med program, Barrios embraced her roots and the Afro-Cuban spirituality instilled in her by her grandmother and nanny, Carmen. The book includes a Spanish glossary, but even without it, the rich context of Barrios's memories fluently conveys the nuances of her idioms and offsets the uneven writing.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 244 pages
• Publisher: Seal Pr (June 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1580050212
• ISBN-13: 978-1580050210
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #376,675 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #99 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Family & Childhood

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unforgettable, April 28, 2000

By 

R. Banfield "Becky Banfield" (Downers Grove, IL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blessed by Thunder: Memoir of a Cuban Girlhood (Hardcover)

At age 10, I went to Girl Scout camp, where I cooked outdoors, got in trouble for playing pranks, spent the days hiking and swimming, and went home after a week. At age 10, the author and her schoolmates were taken out of school and forced into a labor camp where they ate wormy food (when they had it), got in serious trouble for not following the Communist party line, spent the days picking tobacco, and did this for TWO YEARS! Makes you think just how ineffective the Castro system really is, doesn't it? This book should be required reading for those Anglos like me who are trying to understand the Cuban-American experience.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Magnificent!!!!!, August 16, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Blessed by Thunder: Memoir of a Cuban Girlhood (Hardcover)

What a beautifully spirited young woman you share w/us Flor. Her familial and spiritual support and courage to endure through much adversity make this a very inspiring read. There are many stories of struggle under the Castro regim, but this is the first gift of the view through the eyes of a child. Mil Gracias!!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful memoir! Reads like fiction, but its all too true, July 29, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Blessed by Thunder: Memoir of a Cuban Girlhood (Hardcover)

Flor's written her memoir in the voice of the young girl who watched her life, home and family be taken away from her. It is quite a powerful story in its own right and amazing to think of the plight she and her family endured. What is even more inspiring is the way she remained connected to her Cuban roots and found strength in the memories and lessons of her family.