The Pearl of the Antilles - Softcover

O'Reilly Herrera, Andrea

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0927534967 ISBN 13: 9780927534963

Publisher: Bilingual Press, 2001

Synopsis

THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES chronicles the lives of several generations of Cuban women. The story focuses on Margarita, an exile in the United States, who struggles to come to terms with her divided identity, a past she has suppressed, and her failure to share her heritage with her children. The novel explores the ways in which culture and tradition have been preserved and passed down to Cuban Americans and portrays the cultural fragmentation and deep sense of loss that Cubans living in exile and their children (who may never have set foot on Cuban soil) continue to experience.

About this title

From the Publisher

Advanced Praise for THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES:

"With luminous prose and a clarity of historical vision, Andrea O’Reilly Herrera masterfully recreates a family’s saga from Cuba to the other America. Both powerful and tender, her writing testifies to the endurance of the human spirit as well as to the presence of the diaspora in the Cuban exile community to which she belongs." —Marjorie Agosín, author of THE ALPHABET IN MY HANDS: A WRITING LIFE

"This is a rare novel—a quest for origin and legitimacy, exquisitely written in a language that draws on the mysterious forces of continuity and renewal. Moving across time and space, it is the reconstruction of an unfinished world, a way of life that was lost—the waning years of Cuba’s postplantation, pre-Revolutionary period, four generations removed—until we are candidly and painfully brought to the present time. It is a luminous celebration of the Island’s contrapuntal facets: its sensuous, ever-present physical beauty, alongside the cruelty and violence that resulted in a shattering of the old order." —Lourdes Gil, author of EMPIEZA LA CIUDAD

". . . one immediately feels at home in the hands of this gifted new writer as she weaves this amazingly rich and wonderful tapestry of history, memory, myth, and literary (re)envisioning replete with a cast of characters that exalt and uplift the human condition in exile . . . This is the kind of book that passes through our hands only once every decade." —Virgil Suárez, author of IN THE REPUBLIC OF LONGING

About the Author

Andrea O’Reilly Herrera is an associate professor in the Department of English and director of the Ethnic Studies Program at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. She has previously published fiction and poetry in such anthologies as LITTLE HAVANA BLUES: A CUBAN-AMERICAN LITERATURE ANTHOLOGY and a number of literary journals.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bilingual Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0927534967
• ISBN 13: 9780927534963
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 353