The Portable Island: Cubans at Home in the World (New Directions in Latino American Culture) [Paperback]

Ruth Behar (Editor), Lucía M. Suárez (Editor)

Book Description

Series: New Directions in Latino American Culture | Publication Date: October 28, 2008

Cubans today are at home in diasporas that stretch from Miami to Mexico City to Moscow. Back on the island, watching as fellow Cubans leave, the impact of departure upon departure can be wrenching. How do Cubans confront their condition as an uprooted people? The Portable Island: Cubans at Home in the World offers a stunning chorus of responses, gathering some of the most daring Cuban writers, artists, and thinkers to address the haunting effect of globalization on their own lives.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“”This is not the first collection of essays on the Cuban Diaspora, but it may be the most innovative, because it encompasses the widest scope, recognizing that the dispersal of Cubans after the Castro revolution has become a global phenomenon.”--E. Hu-DeHart, Choice

“The Portable Island explores the sensibilities of exile with grace to spare, giving voice to the ambivalence with which all of us –whether exiled or not – yearn for what we’ve lost. The island evoked here is a place both real and mythical: as much a paradise as a hell, as much a point of origin as a destination. Beyond that, these essays and poems also bear eloquent witness to the utter failure of Cuba’s so-called Revolution, which wantonly expels whomever it can’t devour.” --Carlos Eire, author of Waiting for Snow in Havana

"Ruth Behar and Lucia Suarez serve up a sumptuous feast of love for a lost island. The Portable Island demonstrates the indelible impact Cuba has had not just upon its children but on all who come to know it.”—Alfredo Estrada, author of Havana: Autobiography of a City

"Ruth Behar and Lucía M. Suárez, in gathering these inspiring, tenacious meditations on the circuitousness of exile, show that the terms 'home' and 'diaspora' are now synonymous. They also prove that Cuba is not only an island. It has become a metaphor for universalism!”--Ilan Stavans, author of The Hispanic Condition and Spanglish

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Ruth Behar is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. Her most recent book is An Island Called Home: Returning to Jewish Cuba. Lucía M. Suárez is Associate Professor of Spanish at Amherst College.  She is the author of The Tears of Hispaniola: Haitian and Dominican Diaspora Memory.

Product Details

• Paperback: 276 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (October 28, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0230604773
• ISBN-13: 978-0230604773
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,003,738 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)