A Girl Like Che Guevara (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Doval provides an intimate portrait of life inside Communist Cuba in this absorbing if uneven debut. It is January 1982: Che Guevara is a national icon; bread lines curl around Havana corners; and 16-year-old Lourdes Torres is leaving her sheltered urban existence, bound for a camp in the nationalized tobacco fields of the western province of Pinar del Rio. Despite receiving conflicting messages about life in Cuba—the meager food rations vs. communism's pledge to provide for everyone; professed egalitarianism vs. racial discord in her own mixed-race family; an atheistic government vs. clandestine religious sacrifices—Lourdes is an idealist. Socialism makes life better for all, she thinks, and no one is oppressed under Castro's benevolent leadership. Once at the state-run work-study program called School-in-the-Fields, Lourdes learns a lot more about life than she does about tobacco cultivation. There's sex, for one thing: she desires her gorgeous friend Aurora, who "changed lovers as easily and shamelessly as she changed clothes," but she finds a boyfriend in Ernesto, and everywhere, people are hooking up and peeling apart. Her naivete slowly crumbling—after vain, youthful attempts to champion socialist ideals—she eventually becomes aware of the unbecoming underbelly of a flawed culture. By the time she returns to Havana, Lourdes has learned that racial prejudice, duplicity, incompetence, laziness, larceny and oppression are not exclusive to capitalist nations. Doval's flat-footed prose and too-deliberate exposition slow the pace, but her sensitive characterizations and rich picture of Havana and the beguiling Cuban landscape redeem her story.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

In 1982 Lourdes is a 16-year-old "short, copper-skinned mulatica" who must leave her comfortable home in Havana for her four-month stint in the countryside at a government-ordered student work camp. At home, Lourdes loves Russian cartoons and plays with dolls, and once at camp, she feels younger than her friends, who sneak out in the evenings for steamy encounters with boyfriends. She's particularly overwhelmed when the object of her own first passionate crush turns out to be her female bunkmate, the sexually precocious Aurora. While trying to sort out her feelings for Aurora, she masters "the gymnastics of necking" with her first boyfriend and begins to recognize the hypocrisies of communism (particularly when a corruption scheme is uncovered at camp), her father's philandering, and the racism within her family and even herself. Written in Lourdes' vulnerable, believable voice, this moving first novel describes the particulars of living under Cuban communism while skillfully articulating "the pieces of a childhood inexorably left behind." Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Soho Press (April 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1569473978
• ISBN-13: 978-1569473979
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,187,448 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Adolescence & The Rites Of Passage In Communist Cuba!, September 19, 2004

By	Jana L. Perskie "ceruleana" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: A Girl Like Che Guevara (Hardcover)

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

3.0 out of 5 stars High Expectations, July 3, 2009

By	A. Garcia (Southeastern US) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A creative look at coming of age and coming to terms with the Revolution = Great book!, December 23, 2006

By	Ana E. "Fulana" (Gran Manzana) - See all my reviews

"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.