Loving Che

Rating:
Summary: TWO POETIC AND POIGNANT VOICES
Review: Champion voice performers Adriana Sananes and Eileen Stevens breathe life into this story of a love affair between a young artist, Theresa, and rebel Ernesto "Che" Guevara. At times the narrative is softly emotional at other times fraught with danger; it is also an incomparable painting of revolutionary Cuba.

Although she has been searching for a number of years a young Miami woman has not unearthed a clue about her birth mother whom she has never seen nor heard about. One day an unexpected package arrives containing pages of writing and photographs. Slowly these items are pieced together to reveal the life of her mother and the youthful affair she had with "Che" Guevara.

Related in two distinct voices "Loving Che" is poetic, passionate, and poignant - an altogether irresistible listening experience.

- Gail Cooke

Rating:
Summary: TWO POETIC AND POIGNANT VOICES
Review: Champion voice performers Adriana Sananes and Eileen Stevens breathe life into this story of a love affair between a young artist, Theresa, and rebel Ernesto "Che" Guevara. At times the narrative is softly emotional at other times fraught with danger; it is also an incomparable painting of revolutionary Cuba.

Although she has been searching for a number of years a young Miami woman has not unearthed a clue about her birth mother whom she has never seen nor heard about. One day an unexpected package arrives containing pages of writing and photographs. Slowly these items are pieced together to reveal the life of her mother and the youthful affair she had with "Che" Guevara.

Related in two distinct voices "Loving Che" is poetic, passionate, and poignant - an altogether irresistible listening experience.

- Gail Cooke

Rating:
Summary: A welcome addition...
Review: I'm fascinated to see how young Cuban-Americans are beginning to look at the Cuba of their parents' dreams and reassessing what it means to be Cuban. There is an incredible amount of literature on the Cuban experience and all of us should take notice. What these kids are producing is breathtaking! I can think of writers such as Cristina Garcia (The Aguero Sisters), Jorge Reyes (Rediscovering Cuba), and Carlos Eire (Waiting for Snow in Havana.) At long last, Cubans should be proud that this new generation of Cuban-Americans are not forgetting their own history; in fact, they are recreating it and making it fascinating.

Rating:
Summary: Exquisite
Review: Menendez is an eloquent, lyrical, strong writer that captured my attention from the first sentence in "Loving Che." I am Cuban and collect Cuban books. Finally, the market is opening its doors to exceptional Latino writers. If you are a collector of Cuban everything, there is a little gem of a Cuban picturebook (for kids) set in Miami's Little Havana Calle Ocho Festival titled, "Drum, Chavi, Drum!/Toca, Chavi, Toca!" These two books are must read --must have -- for your Cuban book collection.

Rating:
Summary: Lyrical and Thoughtful
Review: Ms. Menendez offers us revolutionary Cuba through the vivid eyes and feelings of a female artist who finds herself in love with Che' Guevara. It is a passionate and political story that is quite well told and, by the end, deeply felt. As the publisher says, "a triumphant unveiling of how the stories we tell about others ultimately become the story of ourselves."

Pleasantly surprising, it is something altogether different from what I expected. The prose of the first part tells a very seductive story of a passionate love affair. The narrative of the second part completes the history of this [un?]imaginable affair.

Well worth the afternoon's read.

Rating:
Summary: Loving Or Hating Che..this book is remarkable.
Review: This first novel by Menendez whose short story collection, In Cuba I was a German Shepherd first showed us her talent, builds on what will be a growing reputation as one of America's newest literary talents. The book which deals with a woman's search for her mother who sent her to America with her grandfather, and her mother's extraordinary life, including an affair with Che. Like so many authors writing today, the lines between where truth begins and end is explored, not only within the context of the story, but within our own experiences.

Menendez economical use of words shows that she is a master of the fiction craft, expecting the reader to delve deeper into the story, but also those assumptions they bring to the work.

Some writers tell a story for the story's sake. Menendez is concerned with art for art's sake as passage to passage is filled with the sensory details and wonderful characterization that would be perfect for study by the would be writer or in writing programs.

Besides that, the reader who latches on to young writers like these can look forward to everything they produce for years to come. It would be like reading the early Alice Walker, or Amy Tan, or Louise Erdrich....knowing that to start out this compelling will only be a prelude of things to come.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting narrative, lovely writing
Review: With beautiful imagery and intriguing language, Menendez has created a mysterious and intriguing story about love, family, and revolutionary Cuba.

This enchanting diptych of a novel begins in standard form with the narrator questioning her childhood in Miami and expressing her frustration at the lack of information she is able to get from her grandfather about her past and her parents. When a mysterious package arrives filled with letters and photos, the novel takes a stylistic turn and we are thrust into a wholly different life; the life of an artist in Cuba in the 1950s. In brief and beautifully written vignettes, these "letters" seemingly explain the narrator's mother's life and her clandestine affair with Che Guevara.

A return to the narrator's voice at the end of the novel details a renewed search for her mother using the information that has been revealed in the letters. While at the heart of the matter the question seems to be whether or not the narrator is the daughter of Che Guevara, the narrator focuses on her search for her mother and Guevara seems to be an afterthought.

While the initial change in narrative is slightly jarring, it is reflective of how we remember and of how and what one chooses to tell about ones life. The return of the narrator's voice is a smooth transition and further illuminates the letters and the difficulty in both sharing secrets and yet keeping them. As Teresa writes to her daughter "...life is not a tidy narrative.... We learn this late. These scraps of memory that become untethered from the rest, flapping disconsolately in the wind, these memories are the most important of all. Memories like these remind us that life is also loose ends, small events that have no bearing on the story we come to write of ourselves."