Cecilia fernandez leaving little havana

"Injustice and revenge, I once heard a professor say, motivate the writer. They certainly fueled my fire," writes Cecilia Fernandez in "Leaving Little Havana: A Memoir of Miami's Cuban Ghetto."

There are many things to love about this memoir, one being Cecilia's drive and determination to assert her independence from her past--the looming shadow of Fidel Castro over the Cuba of her childhood, the conservative tyranny of her distant and neglectful father, her mother's descent into poverty and madness, an abusive boyfriend, and Little Havana itself, the name for Miami's Cuban ghetto--so that she could build a future for herself. The most valuable thing I took away from her story was her recognition of the power of reading, stories, and education as the keys to freedom from oppression in all of its forms.

However, as empowering and honest as her story was, I had trouble relating to the narrator at times because she was so very cruel. First, before leaving Havana, she singles out a weak and insecure boy, Guillermito, whose passivity reminds her of her mother which makes her so angry that she simply "wanted to humiliate him" (34). She then berates him and makes up lies about him until he is reduced to a sniveling, groveling mess. Second, in Miami, she points an accusing finger (also a lie) at an African American girl, Laverne, at her school who is supposedly her *friend*. She admits the shame and guilt she feels for singling out Laverne to save her own hide, especially given the racism of the early 1960s, but then she proceeds to continue her mean behavior by reducing a substitute teacher to tears in a later chapter. I understand that Fernandez is showing her younger self to have been severely wounded by her father's neglect and the dramatic changes in her life due to her move to the U.S., but one theme of this story is about taking responsibility for our actions, good and bad, and also about fighting injustice. She is often the agent of injustice (just like her father whom she despises), and it was hard to like her. Even later in the book, Fernandez reveals that her father's mistress, Beba, Cecilia's nemesis in many ways, is part black, as if that is a reason to dislike Beba and her father more than she already does. This seemed like a superfluous detail, one that showed the narrator's growth and redemption to be somewhat limited. I don't always expect or need to like the narrators of the books I read, but at least with fiction, I can take comfort in the fact that it is *fiction*. I suppose I saw her unsympathetic qualities as a failure of ethos in the telling her story.

This book was, however, educational about Cuba, Miami, and 1960s culture, which I appreciated, but at times I felt as though I were reading a history book or a travel guide. Therefore, I wasn't as dazzled as I expected to be by "Leaving Little Havana," nor did I look forward to going back to Fernandez's world when I was away from the book. In my opinion, good nonfiction should read like fiction (like Dominika Dery's "The Twelve Little Cakes," a much more engaging memoir of the same type), and "Leaving Little Havana" did not. Nonetheless, there is a great deal of wisdom in these pages, and I would recommend this book as bibliotherapy for anyone who struggles with a parent (especially a father), who feels alienated, abandoned, or insecure about his or her place in the world. This memoir is a great guide to finding the true self in a mad world.