Customer Reviews

In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd

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As I walked through the bookstore the other day, a yellow cover with the title "In Cuba I was a German Shepherd" caught my eye and I stopped to read the first few pages. Ana Menendez's eloquent use of the English language pulled me in enough to purchase the book, and I must admit that I didn't regret it.

This is a wonderful collection of short stories about Cuban immigrants and their children. An easy read with a free-flowing style, it was hard for me to put this book down. Yes, the other reviewers are correct in saying that in some stories the characters aren't fully developed, but that doesn't detract too much from the overall feel of the book. I walked away with a somewhat greater understanding of the Cuban community in Miami which is unique in and of itself, but is also very similar to other immigrant communities that also place importance on family, friendships and respect.

If you're looking for a quick read at the beach or on a plane, go ahead and pick up this catchy title, then sit back and savor Menendez's beautiful string of words.

A wonderful collection of stories, at times funny, lyrical, and, above all, moving. Writings are not very even throughout the collection, the title story being the strongest. Linkages of characters in different stories interestingly provide a special dimension to the lives portrayed - an unbreakable web that keeps on closing in. The son of the jealous Matilde who set herself into a banana cooking frenzy in "The Perfect Fruit" becomes the sleepless husband, also consumed by jealousy, who spent the whole night contemplating the nuances of his wife's manners toward another man. In the next to last story "The Party", almost all the characters from other stories show up, each one at a different point of intersection with the omnipresent Cuba buried deep in their souls. Menendez has got an impeccably seamless rhythm in almost all the stories. Even in those weaker ones like "Why We Left", "Hurricane Stories", there is a quite powerful haunting quality. This is a very impressive debut.

I walked through a bookstore years ago and a yellow cover with the title In Cuba I was a German Shepherd stared me in the eye and I stopped to read a few pages. Some days ago I rediscovered it in one of my bookshelves and decided to look it over. It is diverse collection of easy to read short stories about Cuban immigrants. From the first one where Maximo tells jokes to hide his emotional pain while playing dominoes in Miami's Calle Ocho to tasting the guavas in the last story during Lisette's visit to Her Mother's House in Cuba. Some of the stories are better written than others. But they provide a good understanding of the nostagia and emotional pain felt by a Cuban American community that has been estranged from their homeland by the Castro dictatorship.

These eleven short stories with recurring characters range from the comic opener to the darkly sinister "The Perfect Fruit" to the almost Argentine magical realism of "Miami Relatives." There are many flashes of brilliance, such as this from "Miami Relatives":

"The Aunt Julia climbs to the top of the table and holds her arms out for silence. 'Today I ate the sun,' she says. 'The darkness was delicious.' We sit staring at her until she opens her mouth and blinds us."

Or the story "The Last Rescue" which is a fevered depiction of insomnia.

However these moments arrive as flashes precisely because the surrounding text is less bright, less interesting, less illuminated by insight. Long stretches seem strained or uninspired. Perhaps, not being Cuban-American, I cannot relate to the experiences related by the author but my general impression is that the book was somewhat uneven.

Ana Menendez has brought heartbreaking pathos to these tales of Cuban refugees living out their sad lives of exile in Miami. Alternately humorous and sad, the stories tell of the men and women whose lives stopped when they left their homeland for America. We laugh with those who can laugh at themselves, and shake our heads at those who cannot start a new life away from their beloved homeland. The title story moved me to tears, but also made me nod my head in recognition. Deserves to be widely read.

This book completely caught me off guard with its beautifully still scenes of intense imagery. I can't recommend this book enough to people who love authors who have almost a lyrical style. The plot is complex and many of the chapters seem to suspend time in the air. Not arrogant or showy at all, the book is intricately beautiful and a phenomenal piece of art.

Ana Menendez does a fantastic job expressing life as an immigrant. Through humor and uncanny examples and spanish phrases any Cuban is all too familiar with, she brings a sense of nostalgia with her words that reach and communicate not only to the Cuban people but to any group of people anywhere in the world. Fantastic read!

Ana Menendez does a fantastic job expressing life as an immigrant. Through humor and uncanny examples and spanish phrases any Cuban is all too familiar with, she brings a sense of nostalgia with her words that reach and communicate not only to the Cuban people but to any group of people anywhere in the world. Fantastic read!

The stories Ana Menendez collected in her work "In Cuba I was a German Shepherd," have no direct link to each other in the traditional sense of a unified plot working throughout the book. Rather, these stories and their sometimes-overlapping characters share an inherent links and themes that give the book a general sense of unity. One important and omnipresent unifying theme projected in the collection of stories includes romanticizing the past and its affect on the present for each of the characters. When speaking chronologically, past and present appear diametrically opposed in their position on time's arrow. However, Menendez argues that the two remain inseparable in the exilic condition, as the past maintains the place of greatest prominence for her characters amidst the background of the present, not vice versa. Without the past, the characters would lose their interpretation and understanding of the present, as well as the comfort generated by reflecting on the beauties and idiosyncrasies of their Cuban heritage. This backward view on life and its beauty serves as a unifying experience for the exile community and definitely maintains a prominent position in the bittersweet realities of the present.

This book is a collection of short stories, all of which involve Cuban expatriates, and many of which have characters in common. All the stories have a tone of melancholy or even desperation, and all deal with themes of loss--loss of husbands, wives, parents, and children, and especially, loss of a homeland. Each story makes beautiful use of language, but they are mostly the sort of stories in which nothing much really happens: a husband can't sleep because he imagines that his wife is unfaithful, a woman waits to see if her husband will survive the raft trip from Cuba, and so on. While I enjoyed each story, I found the collection as a whole repetitive. By the end, I didn't think that the stories had anything new to say.