Cuba: My Revolution

Seventeen-year-old Sonia, a medical student with dreams of becoming a modernist painter, is caught up in Fidel Castro’s revolution from the moment it captures Havana on New Year’s Eve 1958. While her eccentric mother hatches an increasingly desperate series of plans to flee Cuba, Sonia joins the militia and volunteers as a medic at the Bay of Pigs — where she encounters her mortally wounded high school sweetheart as an enemy fighter, then is arrested and tortured for treating another CIA-trained brigadier. Scarred, yet clinging to her revolutionary ideals, she seeks fulfillment in an artists’ collective, only to be further disillusioned by increasing repression under Castro. Finally, she flees to America where she has been a painter and influential arts activist.

Inverna Lockpez is a Havana-born artist and curator who left Cuba in the late 1960s. Upon settling in the U.S., she became involved in political art movements including the pioneering feminist exhibition x12 and the anti-Vietnam War “People’s Flag Show.” Her painting and sculpture has exhibited in over 80 venues, including the winning design of a major public art competition in New York City. Under her directorship, the INTAR Gallery was cited as one of the best 15 galleries for seven years running by Art in America. A two-time recipient of grants from The National Endowment for the Arts, Lockpez lives in New York and Florida.
Dean Haspiel is the creator of the Eisner Award-nominated Billy Dogma and the webcomics collective ACT-I-VATE. He has drawn comics for The New York Times, DC/Vertigo, Marvel Comics, Dark Horse, Scholastic and Toon Books among others. He is best known for his collaborations with Harvey Pekar on THE QUITTER and with Jonathan Ames on THE ALCOHOLIC and the HBO series Bored to Death. He lives in Brooklyn.