Learning to Die in Miami: Confessions of a Refugee Boy - Softcover

Eire, Carlos

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1439181918 ISBN 13: 9781439181911

Publisher: Free Press, 2011

Synopsis

Continuing the personal saga begun in the National Book Award-winning Waiting for Snow in Havana, the inspiring, sad, funny, bafflingly beautiful story of a boy uprooted by the Cuban Revolution and transplanted to Miami during the years of the Kennedy administration.

In his 2003 National Book Award–winning memoir Waiting for Snow in Havana, Carlos Eire narrated his coming of age in Cuba just before and during the Castro revolution. That book literally ends in midair as eleven-year-old Carlos and his older brother leave Havana on an airplane—along with thousands of other children—to begin their new life in Miami in 1962. It would be years before he would see his mother again. He would never again see his beloved father.

Learning to Die in Miami opens as the plane lands and Carlos faces, with trepidation and excitement, his new life. He quickly realizes that in order for his new American self to emerge, his Cuban self must “die.” And so, with great enterprise and purpose, he begins his journey.

We follow Carlos as he adjusts to life in his new home. Faced with learning English, attending American schools, and an uncertain future, young Carlos confronts the age-old immigrant’s plight: being surrounded by American bounty, but not able to partake right away. The abundance America has to offer excites him and, regardless of how grim his living situation becomes, he eagerly forges ahead with his own personal assimilation program, shedding the vestiges of his old life almost immediately, even changing his name to Charles. Cuba becomes a remote and vague idea in the back of his mind, something he used to know well, but now it “had ceased to be part of the world.”

But as Carlos comes to grips with his strange surroundings, he must also struggle with everyday issues of growing up. His constant movement between foster homes and the eventual realization that his parents are far away in Cuba bring on an acute awareness that his life has irrevocably changed. Flashing back and forth between past and future, we watch as Carlos balances the divide between his past and present homes and finds his way in this strange new world, one that seems to hold the exhilarating promise of infinite possibilities and one that he will eventually claim as his own.

An exorcism and an ode, Learning to Die in Miami is a celebration of renewal—of those times when we’re certain we have died and then are somehow, miraculously, reborn.

About this title

About the Author

Carlos Eire was born in Havana in 1950 and left his homeland in 1962, one of fourteen thousand unaccompanied children airlifted out of Cuba by Operation Pedro Pan. After living in a series of foster homes, he was reunited with his mother in Chicago in 1965. Eire earned his PhD at Yale University in 1979 and is now the T. Lawrason Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale. He lives in Guilford, Connecticut, with his wife, Jane, and their three children. 

From AudioFile

Gifted narrator Robert Fass exploits all the ironic humor and sadness of two young Cuban brothers who are adjusting to their new country, new language, and new school--without their parents. In an airlift few remember, Carlos and Tony arrived in Miami as refugees from the increasingly oppressive Castro government of the early 1960s. The younger brother records his painful memories of racial bullying, mayonnaise sandwiches, and huge rats. As they become bilingual, the boys' raw thoughts in their native language act as hilarious dramatic asides. Fass's sandy, taciturn voice makes addictive a story that everyone who was once a child will appreciate. He has total control of the three languages spoken: English (mostly), Mexican Spanish, and Cuban Spanish. He even sings "O Tannenbaum" in Austrian German. J.A.H. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

About this edition

• Publisher: Free Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1439181918
• ISBN 13: 9781439181911
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336