Customer Reviews

Tastes Like Cuba: An Exile's Hunger for Home

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I have read many Cuban exile memoirs as well as those of Polish, Russian and other exiles groups. I also have several cookbook/memoirs about "old Cuba." This memoir is really one of the most irritating of the lot. Mr Machado goes on and on about loving his homeland and yearning for the taste of its food etc. That is fine. But he also goes on and on about his issues with his family - especially about his resentment towards his parents for sending him as a "Peter Pan" child to the US (Operation Peter Pan was a way for Cuban parents to send their unaccompanied children out of Cuba under the auspices of Catholic charities. This was at a time when parents in Cuba believed that their children would be rounded up and shipped to the Soviet Union to be "re-educated." Out of desperation, they were willing to send their children and then hoped to follow them). Mr Machado at one point rants about how they sent him and his 5 yr old brother just so they could make sure he grew up the way they thought he should. Well, one would wonder at any parent who willingly separated from their child for any other reason except to save them from a fate they viewed as horrible. This is just one example of a general trend to make rather vicious statements about his family, the US govt., other Cuban exiles (especially in Miami) and anyone else that disagrees with his view. It wasn't that gripping a memoir and the it wasn't really a great food related book. I would say that if you want a better Cuban exile memoir, try Pablo Medina's Exiled Memories or Gustavo Perez-Firmat's Next Year in Cuba. And if you really want have a useful cookbook that includes lots of memories and background flavor, then try A Taste of Old Cuba by Maria Josefa Lluria de O'Higgins or Memories of a Cuban Kitchen by Mary Urrutia Randelman. Both are excellent and authentic and filled with family photos and stories. Oh and the Nitza Villapol book(Cocina Criolla or Cocina al Minuto)from the 1950's which Mr Machado mentions is readily available in reprints -- you don't have to go secretly to Cuba and look in a second hand book stall.

The author had me hooked from page one. The writing is excellent, and my only complaint is the fact that the author included Cuban recipes in the main text of the book - it was a little bit distracting, and would have been more useful if the recipes were all in one place, at the end of the book.

However, the story that Eduardo Machado tells is wonderful, detailed and rich with memory about his Cuban childhood, and the significance that familiar foods and traditions have in our lives, especially for those who can't go home. For some American immigrants, the home country is part of their lives - they can fly back home easily, knowing that things will be the way they left them; friends will still be there, and so will most of their relatives.

For refugees, the situation is different - they know they can never go back home, and the new country is their home country. Machado's longing for food and all that is familiar will ring true to any reader who has experienced a life-altering situation, one in which things will never be the same as they were before. I completely understand the author's fascination and near-obsession with the details of food, spices and aromas.

The author's description of the downtown Los Angeles Grand Central Market is so accurate, and I have been told by many people that visiting this open-air market for the first time made them feel like they were back home again. I highly recommend this book.

Just finished reading this story..It is fantastic, has all, loved it. I related to it. The food, the story, the pain of Cuba..

The first half of the book is worth reading -- his memories of his childhood in Cuba, and the family's experiences when they first arrive in America. Unfortunately, the book disappoints in the second half. The author (Eduardo Machado) comes across as unappreciative and annoying when he complains about his family and the fact that his parents sent him and his brother to Miami on their own through Operation Peter Pan (Pedro Pan) -- he should be thankful that his parents did what they had to do to get them out of a Communist country so that they could have a better life. It is quite obvious toward the end of the book that he himself is a communist sympathizer. In addition, he writes about his family at the beginning, but towards the end he leaves the reader wondering what happened to his brother, or his cousins -- that may have been a bit more interesting then what the second half of the book became. I recommend it for the first half of the book and the recipes, but you can quit reading half way through.

Eduardo Machado wrote a wonderful memoir of his early life in Cuba, to his young adult life in Miami and then Los Angeles, and then in his later years in New York and back in California.
His food recollections of his early days of Newspaper Soup, Bistec Empanizado, Arroz con Pollo, etc., he describes in such delicious detail.
His journey from Cuba to Hialeah and then to Miami pulled at my heart-strings. When him and his family got to Los Angeles, he wrote about many incidents. One in particular affected me very much. Him and his family went shopping at the Central Market in the valley. They were trying to find the foods they had grown up with in Cuba.
I could go on with this review, but in short, this book was one of the best memoirs in the food/immigration subjects.
Eduardo, thank you very much for a wonderful, tasty, and can't put it down read. Bravo!

I bought the book as a cookbook, not realizing what a wonderful story the book contained. The story told of the Cuban influx to America is an untold story. I found the human interest part of the history the greatest lesson learned. I have lived in Florida since 1960, but I was born in 1959 so I was not old enough to appreciate what was going on at the time of the fall of Old Cuba. The book's original purchase purpose as a book on Cuban cooking instead started a desire to learn more about my neighbors and where they came from. It is a history that deserves to be told and this book does an outstanding job of presenting it. I am so glad I found and purchased the book, the lessons learned will stay with me for a lifetime. And as a side, I did try a few of the recipes in the book, the recipe with the family story behind it made of a very enriching meal for both the mind and the soul as well as the stomach.

Eduardo Machado is an excellent story teller. His skill is descriptive like a tapestry. It has given me a great insight into what life in Cuba was before, during, and after Castro. Machado's personal account of his family's survival in the face of tragedy is extraordinary.

I purchased this book to read about Cuba and found the recipes to be a great bonus. Highly recommend it.

I chose this book because it was a selection of Chautauqua's Literary and Scientific Circle this summer. It's a moving story of yearning for home through food. Lots of recipes among the remembrances.

I immigrated into the US in the early sixties. Although I consider myself more American than Cuban after fifty years of exile, eating some of the recipes mentioned in the book such as bistek empanizado fill my stomach and soul with the nostalgic flavor of my former piece of Paradise.

Signed:
Andrew J. Rodriguez
Award-winning author: "Adios, Havana," A Memoir.