Customer Reviews

Girl Like Che Guevara

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La Habana, Cuba, 1982 - Fidel Castro has led Cuba's Communist Revolution for 23 years. Ronald Reagan has been the US President for just over a year. Approximately 125,000 Cubans emigrated to the US 20 months before, in the Mariel boatlift. The international community is still immersed in the Cold War. However, the reader's focus is drawn to a narrower world, that of Lourdes, a Havana 16-year-old. She is in the terrible throws of adolescence - raging hormones, insecurity, anxiety, confusion. Her skin is too dark, she is too skinny, her hair is too frizzy and she will never attract a cool boyfriend. In order to maintain a mature outlook on her turbulent life, and focus on what is really important to the community, not just herself, she tries to live-up to the revolutionary standards of her hero, Che Guevera. An idealist, Lourdes fervently believes socialism makes a better life for all, and thinks no one is oppressed under Fidel's leadership.

Lourdes Torres comes from a privileged family. Her father, Dr. Rafael Torres, is a respected professor of Political Economy of Communism at the University of Havana and a Caucasian, of certified Spanish descent. Although revolutionary Cuba has done much to eliminate racism, it is still rampant throughout the country. Before the revolution, there was virtual segregation, and although the situation has improved, and all have equal rights, the color of one's skin still matters. White is best. Then light brown, "cafe con mucho leche," and on down the color scale until it reaches darkest brown or "black." There are all kinds of combinations and permutations and subtleties, which I won't go into here. The point is that skin color does matter.

Because of her father's position, Lourdes leads a sheltered life. The family is allowed to shop in special stores, go on occasional vacations to beach resorts and stay for a week at a hotel, eating all kinds of food - as much as they want. They live in a nice house, (una casona), in the Havana suburbs, and even have the option of buying a new car. Lourdes' paternal grandmother, Granma Gloria, from Galicia, Spain, was a lady before the revolution and still maintains certain airs. She adores her son and granddaughter, but has little affection for her dark-skinned daughter-in-law. Barbarita, Lourdes mother, is the daughter of a poor black woman, Granma Ines, who practices Santeria, an ancient African religion where the old gods, "orishas," are still worshipped in the form of Catholic saints. Both grandmothers' religions, Catholicism and Santeria are counterrevolutionary and not practiced in the open. Lourdes is conflicted about this, and other differences between the old ways and the new. She does strive, with intensity, to be a good revolutionary, like Che, and longs to be accepted into the Young Communist League.

She is sent, along with her classmates, to a state-run work-study program in Pinar del Rio, called School-in the Field, to work in tobacco fields. For the first time, Lourdes, an only child, is exposed to large numbers of kids her own age, boys and girls, in a live-in situation. And she learns much more about life than tobacco cultivation. She compares revolutionary slogans she always believed, ("Man Is More Than White; More Than Mulatto; More Than Black! Men Die But The Party Is Immortal! Homeland Or Death!"), to real life in the real world. Her romantic idealism is contrasted with the grim reality of the hot sun beating down on her aching back, bug bites, not enough food and long hours at monotonous work. She begins to see the flaws in her perfect society, flaws not unique to life under capitalism.

Teresa de la Caridad Doval, born and raised in Havana, now a resident of New Mexico, really gives the reader an accurate glimpse of life in Cuba in the early 1980s. At that time I visited Cuba on business and her descriptions and characterizations ring true. The prose is uneven and the novel's pace has its slow moments, but overall I enjoyed the story. I would recommend "A Girl Like Che Guevara," especially if you are interested in life in revolutionary Cuba.

JANA

This is a very well-written and structured novel that depicts the cuban reality in a very interesting and intelligent way. I could not put it down!

With a title like A Girl Like Ghe Guevara, I have to admit, I had high expectations. Unfortunately, the book did not live up to them. At one point, I found myself saying, "Okay, I'll give it 50 more pages, and if it doesn't get better, then I'll stop." Luckily, it did get a little better and I was able to settle in and to finish the novel.

One thing that I did like was that it gave me an opportunity to see Communist Cuba from the point of view of a young niave Cuban girl, and that was interesting. Somehow Lourdes (the main character) was able to remain fairly positive considering everything that she saw and endured. That was a nice testament to the resiliance of the teenage spirit.

In all, I think once I accepted that the book wasn't going to be what I had expected, I was able to enjoy it.

On a more positive note: the characters were well done (though some too stereotypical) and the author did a great job in depicting the other-than-ideal society in which these people lived.

"Doesn't the sky look bloody?" one of the teachers asks as the school's extended stay in the School in the Fields begins. It's just one of the many masterful ways that Doval flirts with magical realism in her book - in fact, the whole story has an intense, almost dreamlike quality that sets Lourdes and her classmates firmly in the campo, where "spirits" might be the ones perpetrating the petty thefts and the "Mother of the Water" lurks at night. The parents are gone, and the teachers willing to "pretend they didn't notice" many things (when not participating in them) - so it's the adolescents themselves whose voices dominate as they flirt, gossip, bully, work, and survive in their arduous rite of passage in 1982 Cuba. Lourdes, the sensitive and intelligent protagonist, tries to make sense of it all, and comes to many conclusions that complicate her ideas about the world beyond the camp. A fantastic read.

In Havana, Cuba during 1982 high school students were required to put in time in the Tobacco fields as part of their learning and as service to the communist regime. A Girl Like Che Guevara follows the life of Lourdes Torres from her sixteenth birthday through her four month term (January - April) in the School-in-the-Fields Pinar, del Rio camp.

Lourdes is growing up in a country where two worlds seem to be colliding (communism and US commercialism). She learns her dreams of being part of the young Communist League and trying to be like her hero Che Guevara, a Marxist revolutionary and Cuban guerrilla leader, are not as easy as she thought they would be.

A Girl Like Che Guevara shows the hierarchy of being a teenager from a Cuban perspective. The author, Teresa Doval, calls her book, a little dirty piece of life in Cuba. She's right. At one point I thought the camp should be called Sex-in-the-fields. There's a lot of abuse, via bullying and food rations to go along with the dirt. Like the dirt Lourdes describes while she stitches away her days in the sewing shacks: "a film of dust covered our lips while our stomachs growled with repressed hunger."

Lourdes' job involves sewing the tobacco leaves onto dried sticks. This was considered the women's work while the boys worked in groups picking the leaves and finding the perfect sticks. Hundreds of students were supervised by a few teachers, some reliable and some not so reliable.

The transition from child to young woman is not a new theme but to read about it in the confines of post revolution Cuba is. Cuba has suffered a rich history of upheaval and to witness the growth of a little girl into a woman during the harshness of this back drop is endearing and educational. I really had no background on Cuba, Che Guevara or tobacco fields. It was an eye opener. Teresa handles it beautifully, with respect and without attempting to deliver a history lesson. I was lost on some of the political references but it didn't take away from the story.

Racial politics is everywhere. Lourdes fantasizes about being as white as the women in the Russian magazines she reads. Other strong themes are family, loss, friendship, religion, culture and community, as well as sexuality. Homosexuality is frowned upon by the communist party but Lourdes suddenly finds herself in love and yearning for her bed buddy.

I was annoyed by the continued "Fat" Olga descriptions after the initial introduction. Fat Olga this, Fat Olga that. There was more to Olga than being fat. Sometimes I stumbled on the mingled Spanish and English but mostly I enjoyed Teresa's visions of life at camp.

This is an entertaining story and a look into an interesting culture, often ignored. I recommend reading it. Reviewed by M. E. Wood

I absolutely loved this book! I can't wait for Teresa to write her next novel, her writing takes you places and brings forth the most amazing characters. I can go on and on over how fabulous Teresa is, but I would use up all the words I have in me. Read this book!