Cuba in My Pocket

 

Publication Date: September 21, 2021

From the Publisher:

By the author of 2021 Pura Belpré Honor Book The Total Eclipse of Nestor Lopez, a sweeping, emotional middle grade historical novel about a twelve-year-old boy who leaves his family in Cuba to immigrate to the U.S. by himself, based on the author's family history.

“I don’t remember. Tell me everything, Pepito. Tell me about Cuba.”
When the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 solidifies Castro’s power in Cuba, twelve-year-old Cumba’s family makes the difficult decision to send him to Florida alone. Faced with the prospect of living in another country by himself, Cumba tries to remember the sound of his father’s clarinet, the smell of his mother’s lavender perfume.
Life in the United States presents a whole new set of challenges. Lost in a sea of English speakers, Cumba has to navigate a new city, a new school, and new freedom all on his own. With each day, Cumba feels more confident in his new surroundings, but he continues to wonder: Will his family ever be whole again? Or will they remain just out of reach, ninety miles across the sea?

My Thoughts:

This post will not be published until August, 2021, but know that I finished the book in the early morning hours of the last day of February as the rain and wind swirl in my valley, on another island two oceans away from both Cuba and Florida. As someone born and raised on an island that was once its own kingdom and nation before the overthrow by the "Yankees," I have had a long fascination with Cuba as a tale of parallel realities. In 1959, as a way to further colonize Hawaii under the thumb of the Big Five Sugar Plantations, and as a way to firmly secure America's military might in the Pacific, without any other viable alternative, the citizens of the US Territory of Hawaii became the 50th and last state of what we now know as the United States of America. A few years later, the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba (covertly supported by American dollars) was a major failure of American foreign policy and it severed the relationship between US and Cuba until 2015. 

This historical fiction starts in 1961 when 12-year old Cumba, the son of a lawyer father and a dentist mother is sent to America alone in order to save him from being forced to join Fidel's Young Rebels. Although this is based on the author's father's story of being sent to the US alone to live with strangers, this is also about the story of thousands of Cuban children who fled the oppression of Cuba to forge new lives in a foreign country.  Perhaps the saddest sentiment in the book is Cumba's hope for an open Cuba where he can return to his grandparents and he can be back home in his beloved village. Knowing that Castro held on to power for 50 years until his retirement, as the reader, I know this boy will never see his grandparents again. It is too much knowledge to have over this young narrator. 

So how accurate is this particular story? Cuevas honors his father's story and memorializes this memory for future generations.  Although Cuevas' father was older when he first came (15), I like that he made Cumba younger because it places him in middle school where both magic and trauma can take place in the same space. The power of allies in America for these children is very poignant. I cannot help but think about the immigrant children over these past four years who have been separated from their families under American immigration policy. I wonder if these grown up Cuban immigrants and interned Japanese Americans have been able to be allies for these children. I also remember other historical times when families, out of desperation and hope have sent their children away to save them. One that comes to mind immediately is Lois Lowrey's  Number the Stars.  Their stories live on in our conscience through YA authors who continue to share these tales of hope and triumph.