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Summary: Memories, memories!
Review: We hear the figure of six million dead Jews in the Hollocaust and we can't grasp it. We read Ann Frank and we weep. Sometimes tragedies that overwhelm us in macroeconomic terms, become reality when viewed through the eyes of one individual. Carlos Eire has been able to do this.
Like Mr. Eire I grew up in Havana in the 50's. I too was a Pedro Pan in the 60's. I too came without a penny and have been able to make my way in this wonderful new land. Each of his "facts" and memories correspond to my facts and memories of the same period. The book is as true to life as it can be for me and a great refresher for others who may have lived through similar times. For those not familiar with this period, the careful details he enumerates bring to life a society that has been gone for half a century. I commend the author on this great work.
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Summary: Warm nostaglia, irony, and smoldering rage
Review: "Waiting for Snow in Havana" is a warm and entertaining descripton of being catapulted from a privileged childhood in Havana to an abrupt and grinding struggle in the United States. Eire focuses his memoir on endearing recollections of childhood as the pampered son of a Cuban judge. However, it is balanced by brief allusions to the harsh fate he encountered as a refugee in the United States.Eire's memoir is full of irony, referencing his childhood aversion of being black (afraid to eat chocolate for fear of transforming), which he associated with poverty and servitude only to have his white identity challenged after experiencing severe prejudice as a Latino after coming to the United States. Additionally, the reader infers that Eire interprets his destiny as in part "karma" for being shielded from punishment for childhood malicious mischief because of his status as the spoiled child of a prominent public official. This book exudes the familiar rage of formerly upper middle class Cuban immigrants over their need to flee the island, and the radical transformations that followed many of which reek of hypocracy and corruption. Reading works like this helps to make more understandable the mentality of the Cuban diaspora in Miami. Eire's recollections are bittersweet and personally tragic, as they document a happy and pampered childhood filled with family love, followed by inexplicable hurt and disillusionment over a father who refused to live Cuba to join his emigre family. An engrossing, and well written story. It is evidence of the incredible fortitude and resilience of many Cubans who fled to the United States following Castro's revolution.
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Summary: No Luck in Being Born in Cuba
Review: At its best, childhood is a short-lived, fragile transition into adolescence and beyond. This is a story of a childhood interrupted by revolution. One day, the author was the privileged son of a respected, albeit eccentric judge, and the next day he was one more "spic" washing dishes at the Chicago Hilton. A Spanish philosopher wrote, "I am me and my circumstances". This book, with humor and pathos, illustrates the meaning of that. We are judged as much for where we are as for what we are.
I agree with the author; it was no great stroke of luck to be born in 20th century Cuba. That is one thing that all Cubans--save Castro's elite, perhaps--have in common. The island was their ship and it might as well have been named "Titanic".
Rating:
Summary: Waiting for Snow in Havana-Well Worth the Wait
Review: At long last, a book that tells the truth about how the Cuban Revolution affected Children whose only crime was being born in Cuba in the 1950's! We meet Carlos and his family on January 1st 1959. Carlos is 8 years old and is world is going to change dramatically and forever. Batista has fled and Castro is marching down the main street in Havana atop a Sherman tank. Within three years, life will totally change for Carlos and his older brother Tony. Eventually they will join the more than 14,000 unaccompanied Cuban children leaving for the USA towards and unknown future. The adventures continue...and seen through the eyes of Carlos it takes on an almost magical quality. Wherever Carlos Eire takes us on this Magical Mystery tour there in never a dull moment...whether ducking whizzing bullets or picking flowers for his mother in the park with his friends, or playing in the backyard of a neighbor who has a live chimp as a pet-one is totally enthralled in this rich narrative. For anyone who enjoys seeing the world through the eyes of a child, sprinkled with the insightful and almost transcendent wisdom of someone who has experienced and survived a cataclysmic shift in personal and cultural identity, Waiting for Snow in Havana was well worth the wait!!
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Summary: A Privileged Childhood at Odds with Castro's Cuba
Review: Author Carlos Eire led a fairly charmed life as a child in pre-Revolution Cuba. In this intriguing memoir, he writes of his idyllic life in the suburbs of Havana just before Castro evicted Batista. As the son of a prominent judge who believed he was the reincarnated King Louis XVI, Eire experienced privilege, Catholic guilt and voodoo curses inflicted by the family maid. But his childhood slowly disintegrated after the Batista government fell, while rumors circulated that Castro would separate children from families. Eire's mother insisted on getting the boys out, but his already estranged father did not, an act that continued to haunt the author through his adulthood. Eire and his older brother then became two of the 14,000 children airlifted out of Cuba in Operation Pedro Pan in 1962. They eventually reunited with their mother and settled in Chicago.
The author writes with exacting detail, which for the most part, serves him well in describing a life torn asunder and ultimately put back together through persistence and faith. At the same time, I get the feeling he misses the privileged life he had in Havana almost too much, and the book becomes exasperating in what comes across sometimes as an obsession with his past. And in certain ways, the author still seems angry about the loss of his pre-Castro existence of swimming pools and extravagant birthday parties, not an appealing trait for a man now in his fifties. Perhaps this tone was intentional since the effect of the airlift left him that much more unprepared for life in the United States. But he gets a bit too much mileage out of relatively trivial things like his phobia with lizards. Every page seems crammed full of incidental information, yet somehow Eire succeeds in keeping me compelled by how he copes. I also give the author credit for not turning this book into a diatribe against Castro as that would have been too easy a route to take. He seems genuinely conflicted about the current state of his native country, and that seems like the most honest aspect of the book. Eire has said he was inspired to write his story by the Elian Gonzales case, but Eire's story seems more singular, more idiosyncratic than even little Elian's story. An unexpectedly effective memoir even with all its flaws, highly recommended for those interested in Cuba during that volatile period.
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Summary: A New Purveyor of Magical Realism
Review: Carlos Eire arrives on the literary scene with a tasty eye for the magical, a sense of humor that is ingratiating, an ability to capture the tenor of Cuba at the time of the Revolution, an adult's sense of tragedy as perceived through the trusting eyes of a child. WAITING FOR SNOW IN HAVANA: Confessions of a Cuban Boy is wonderful rollercoaster of a ride that recalls the unimaginable beauty of Cuba before the fall, walks through the tangled streets of a city destroyed by a dictator, and finally looks back (and down) at the Cuba of today from a vantage in the United States. Eire knows children well, so well that at times his writing is so convincingly that of a wide-eyed child that the reader needs to back up a few pages to realize this is a memoir and not a novel. In the end he has more thoroughly than any other writer given us an insider's view of Cuba in the 50's and 60's that it is possible for us to understand the mountainous changes that Fidel Castro effected on this lovely island. To say more would be to spoil an E-ride in Disneyland. Read this book for the joy of a child's perception, the insight of an expatriate's knowledge, and the philosophy of a man of heart and hope. A fine Debut Novel.
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Summary: Magical evocation of innocence lost
Review: Carlos Eire has created a memorable record of his childhood in Havana writng beautifully of his lovely surroundings populated by colorful characters, many of them related to him. The shadow of impending doom in the shape of Fidel's revolution slowly but relentlessly advances over this idylic scene and ultimately results in his secure world and his family being torn apart.
This book brilliantly combines a distinctly Cuban coming of age tale with a view into Cuba at the time of the revolution as experienced through the eyes of a comfortable middle class child.
Eire's writing is so evocative of the feelings he associates with the various episodes in his early life that the reader is drawn into his experience in a very visceral way.
I thought this book was beautifully written and at times emotionally wrenching. A wonderful eye-opening read . Highest reccomendation.
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Summary: Miserere mei, Domine, Cubanus sum.
Review: Carlos Eire's ironic yet desperately needful alteration of St. Jerome's prayer: " Have mercy on me, Lord, I am a Cuban. " ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hundreds of books have been written about the horrors inflicted on the Cuban people by Castro, or to call him by the official title he bestowed upon himself, in a characteristic moment of humility, " The Maximum Leader. " Some have been written by survivors of Casro's prison camps, or by other Cubans, who nowdays are as bewildered as they are angered when some Hollywood Celeb--or some other famous twit-- makes a trip to Havana to shoot the breeze with Fidel. (Pol Pot and Nero being unavailable) And come back singing his praises. For Carlos Eire, his reawakening came in the aftermath of the Elian Gonzales affair. Carlos knew the kid was being sent back to hell by a sleazy administration under the eyes of a largely uncaring American public. Eire had done well for himself. A happily married family man and a respected professor at Yale, he thought he had put his Cuban past behind him, that it was no longer was capable of hurting him. He was wrong. As he admitted on T.V., He became wildly frantic and was unable to know a moment's peace until he finished writing his story, the confessions of a boy growing up in Havana at the time of Castro's takeover. For a hurriedly written memoir, this is a magnificent masterpiece. More poignant than the graphic documentations of tortured prisoners. Eire is truly an amazing writer. He weaves vivid imagery and dark humor into a fast paced, fascinating tale. As he states in his preamble: " This is not a work of fiction. But the author would like it to be. " This is a Greek tragedy set in the Caribbean. Fate may not be personified, but it's there, whether one calls it luck or any other name. Moderns who are into positive thinking may not relate to that aspect of it; Sophocles would have no problem. But for anyone who appreciates great writing, this work leaves one stunned by its brilliance and its honesty.
Rating: 
Summary: Crocodile Tears in Havana
Review: Having left Cuba as a young girl of 10, I lived through what he shares in the book. His story is told with sentiment and true emotion, as only one can tell it having lived through it. I hope Mr. Eire keeps on writing books such as this.
Rating:
Summary: Deserves 10 stars!
Review: How does the author manage to succesfully mix humor, memories and sadness? This is one of the most beautiful books I've read in a long time. I could not put it down, he wove a spell around me and transported me to the Cuba of my childhood! I found myself laughing out loud and wiping tears from my eyes. It is a masterpiece. I cannot recommend it enough.
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