Finding Manana: A Memoir of a Cuban Exodus
Autor Mirta Ojitoen Limba Engleză Paperback – 31 mar 2006 – vârsta de la 18 ani
Finding Mañana is a vibrant, moving memoir of one family's life in Cuba and their wrenching departure. Mirta Ojito was born in Havana and raised there until the unprecedented events of the Mariel boatlift brought her to Miami, one teenager among more than a hundred thousand fellow refugees. Now a reporter for The New York Times, Ojito goes back to reckon with her past and to find the people who set this exodus in motion and brought her to her new home. She tells their stories and hers in superb and poignant detail-chronicling both individual lives and a major historical event.
Growing up, Ojito was eager to excel and fit in, but her parents'—and eventually her own—incomplete devotion to the revolution held her back. As a schoolgirl, she yearned to join Castro's Young Pioneers, but as a teenager in the 1970s, when she understood the darker side of the Cuban revolution and learned more about life in el norte from relatives living abroad, she began to wonder if she and her parents would be safer and happier elsewhere. By the time Castro announced that he was opening Cuba's borders for those who wanted to leave, she was ready to go; her parents were more than ready: They had been waiting for this opportunity since they married, twenty years before.
Finding Mañana gives us Ojito's own story, with all of the determination and intelligence—and the will to confront darkness—that carried her through the boatlift and made her a prizewinning journalist. Putting her reporting skills to work on the events closest to her heart, she finds the boatlift's key players twenty-five years later, from the exiles who negotiated with Castro to the Vietnam vet on whose boat, Mañana, she finally crossed the treacherous Florida Strait. Finding Mañana is the engrossing and enduring story of a family caught in the midst of the tumultuous politics of the twentieth century.
Growing up, Ojito was eager to excel and fit in, but her parents'—and eventually her own—incomplete devotion to the revolution held her back. As a schoolgirl, she yearned to join Castro's Young Pioneers, but as a teenager in the 1970s, when she understood the darker side of the Cuban revolution and learned more about life in el norte from relatives living abroad, she began to wonder if she and her parents would be safer and happier elsewhere. By the time Castro announced that he was opening Cuba's borders for those who wanted to leave, she was ready to go; her parents were more than ready: They had been waiting for this opportunity since they married, twenty years before.
Finding Mañana gives us Ojito's own story, with all of the determination and intelligence—and the will to confront darkness—that carried her through the boatlift and made her a prizewinning journalist. Putting her reporting skills to work on the events closest to her heart, she finds the boatlift's key players twenty-five years later, from the exiles who negotiated with Castro to the Vietnam vet on whose boat, Mañana, she finally crossed the treacherous Florida Strait. Finding Mañana is the engrossing and enduring story of a family caught in the midst of the tumultuous politics of the twentieth century.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9780143036609
ISBN-10: 0143036602
Pagini: 302
Ilustrații: b/w photos on chapter opening pages
Dimensiuni: 141 x 213 x 18 mm
Greutate: 0.28 kg
Editura: Penguin Books
ISBN-10: 0143036602
Pagini: 302
Ilustrații: b/w photos on chapter opening pages
Dimensiuni: 141 x 213 x 18 mm
Greutate: 0.28 kg
Editura: Penguin Books
Cuprins
Prologue
One: Worms Like Us
Two: Bernaro Benes: Our Man in Miami
Three: Butterlfies
Four: Héctor Sanyustiz: A Way Out
Five: Ernesto Pinto: An Embassy Under Siege
Six: Unwanted
Seven: Napoleón Vilaboa: The Golden Door
Eight: Leaving Cuba
Nine: Captain Mike Howell: Sailing Mañana
Ten: Tempest-Tost
Eleven: Teeming Shore
Twelve: With Open Arms
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
One: Worms Like Us
Two: Bernaro Benes: Our Man in Miami
Three: Butterlfies
Four: Héctor Sanyustiz: A Way Out
Five: Ernesto Pinto: An Embassy Under Siege
Six: Unwanted
Seven: Napoleón Vilaboa: The Golden Door
Eight: Leaving Cuba
Nine: Captain Mike Howell: Sailing Mañana
Ten: Tempest-Tost
Eleven: Teeming Shore
Twelve: With Open Arms
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Notă biografică
Mirta Ojito was born in Havana, Cuba, and came to the United States in 1980 in the Mariel boatlift. She has received the American Society of Newspaper Editors' Award for best foreign reporting, and she shared the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting, for her contribution to the series "How Race Is Lived in America." Her work has appeared in several anthologies, including Written into History: Pulitzer Prize Reporting of the Twentieth Century from The New York Times, edited by Anthony Lewis. Ojito has taught journalism at New York University, Columbia University, and the University of Miami. She writes for The New York Times from Miami.
Extras
From Finding Manana by Mirta Ojito
The police came May 7, 1980, when I was about to have lunch: a plain yogurt, sweetened with several spoonfuls of sugar, fried yellow plantains, and an egg and ketchup sandwich on half a loaf of Cuban bread. I was wearing a bata de casa, a housecoat, over my painstakingly ironed school uniform: a blue skirt with two white stripes around the bottom hem, signaling I was in eleventh grade, and a starched white poplin blouse, which I didn’t want to stain with grease.
I was just sitting down when I heard the steps on the stairs. Heavy, loud steps. One, two. One, two. One, one, two. I could tell they belonged to a woman and two men. Years of listening to people climb the twenty polished steps that led to our apartment had trained my ear for the idiosyncrasies of footsteps. By the way she paused after every other step, I knew the woman was our downstairs neighbor and la presidenta del comité, the president of the neighborhood watchdog committee. The men were agile and led the way. They skipped several steps and got to the door before I could alert my mother.
A knock.
On the red plastic clock above the television set it was fifteen minutes past eleven in the morning. I looked at my mother, who was straightening her skirt at the door to the bedroom, where she had been sewing a dress. Her maroon skirt was littered with pieces of yellow thread. I waited for a signal from her. She heard the knock too, but did not move. Then our neighbor spoke.
“Mirta,” she called out to my mother, a little out of breath. “Open up. It’s the police. You are leaving.”
My mother swallowed and opened the door. A burly officer, unshaven and dressed in olive green pants and a white T-shirt with large sweat rings under his arms, walked in. Without introducing himself, he read our names out loud: Orestes Maximino Ojito Denis, Mirta Hilaria Muñoz Quintana, Mirta Arely Ojito Muñoz, and Mabel Ojito Muñoz.
“Are these the names of the people who live here?” he asked. My mother, who had started to tremble, said yes.
“There is a boat waiting for you at the port of Mariel,” he said, pausing a bit to gauge our reaction. He went on, “Are you ready and willing to abandon the country at this time?”
“Yes,” my mother said, her voice merely a whisper.
The police came May 7, 1980, when I was about to have lunch: a plain yogurt, sweetened with several spoonfuls of sugar, fried yellow plantains, and an egg and ketchup sandwich on half a loaf of Cuban bread. I was wearing a bata de casa, a housecoat, over my painstakingly ironed school uniform: a blue skirt with two white stripes around the bottom hem, signaling I was in eleventh grade, and a starched white poplin blouse, which I didn’t want to stain with grease.
I was just sitting down when I heard the steps on the stairs. Heavy, loud steps. One, two. One, two. One, one, two. I could tell they belonged to a woman and two men. Years of listening to people climb the twenty polished steps that led to our apartment had trained my ear for the idiosyncrasies of footsteps. By the way she paused after every other step, I knew the woman was our downstairs neighbor and la presidenta del comité, the president of the neighborhood watchdog committee. The men were agile and led the way. They skipped several steps and got to the door before I could alert my mother.
A knock.
On the red plastic clock above the television set it was fifteen minutes past eleven in the morning. I looked at my mother, who was straightening her skirt at the door to the bedroom, where she had been sewing a dress. Her maroon skirt was littered with pieces of yellow thread. I waited for a signal from her. She heard the knock too, but did not move. Then our neighbor spoke.
“Mirta,” she called out to my mother, a little out of breath. “Open up. It’s the police. You are leaving.”
My mother swallowed and opened the door. A burly officer, unshaven and dressed in olive green pants and a white T-shirt with large sweat rings under his arms, walked in. Without introducing himself, he read our names out loud: Orestes Maximino Ojito Denis, Mirta Hilaria Muñoz Quintana, Mirta Arely Ojito Muñoz, and Mabel Ojito Muñoz.
“Are these the names of the people who live here?” he asked. My mother, who had started to tremble, said yes.
“There is a boat waiting for you at the port of Mariel,” he said, pausing a bit to gauge our reaction. He went on, “Are you ready and willing to abandon the country at this time?”
“Yes,” my mother said, her voice merely a whisper.
Descriere
Born in Havana and raised there until the unprecedented events of the Mariel boatlift brought her to Miami, the author was the one teenager among more than 100,000 fellow refugees. This is her vibrant memoir of life in Cuba and the wrenching departure.