A welcome addition to the literature of Castro and Cuba.
A sympathetic portrait of the younger years of the quixotic Cuban “liberal nationalist.”
Hansen (Latin American History/Harvard Univ.; Guantánamo: An American History, 2011, etc.) underscores Fidel Castro’s (1926-2016) rise in terms of Cuba’s long, frustrating wait for emancipation from foreign powers. “When Cubans thought they had [independence] in their grasp in 1898,” writes the author, “the United States snatched it away, inaugurating six decades of political and economic subservience that haunts Cuba to this day.” Castro always had a larger vision in mind, from growing up the son of a “hardworking, serious, unaffectionate” farmer near Santiago de Cuba to his education next to the Havana elite and his immersion in the violent revolutionary push back of the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship. Castro believed that because of his “record of sacrifice” and unswerving dedication to the cause that he alone should be the legitimate leader of the revolutionary struggle. Hansen frames this story of young Castro around the letters the author was granted access to by the aged Naty Revuelta, a like-minded revolutionary who shared a two-year mostly epistolary affair with Castro while he was in prison after the attack on the Moncada military barracks in Santiago de Cuba in July 1953. Sharpening his skills as a leader and envisioning a new government for Cuba, Castro needed books; in particular, he asked Revuelta for books on Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. Hansen emphasizes that Castro did not head to Cuba from exile in Mexico with his ragged band of revolutionaries in 1956 with the intention of engendering a communist regime—only later, because he was shunned by the U.S., did Castro make his alliance with the Soviet Union. Castro believed fervently that Cuba was ripe for revolution and emancipation, and in the disciplined, restless, and ultimately lucky Castro, the country found its leader at last. While the early period of Castro’s life is not the most exciting, the details in the makeup of the man come together for an engaging, astute character study.
A welcome addition to the literature of Castro and Cuba.Pub Date: June 18, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4767-3247-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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