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Summary
Summary
A poignant, hilarious, and inspiring memoir from the first Latino and openly gay inaugural poet, which explores his coming-of-age as the child of Cuban immigrants and his attempts to understand his place in America while grappling with his burgeoning artistic and sexual identities.
Richard Blanco's childhood and adolescence were experienced between two imaginary worlds: his parents' nostalgic world of 1950s Cuba and his imagined America, the country he saw on reruns of The Brady Bunch and Leave it to Beaver--an "exotic" life he yearned for as much as he yearned to see "la patria."
Navigating these worlds eventually led Blanco to question his cultural identity through words; in turn, his vision as a writer--as an artist--prompted the courage to accept himself as a gay man. In this moving, contemplative memoir, the 2013 inaugural poet traces his poignant, often hilarious, and quintessentially American coming-of-age and the people who influenced him.
A prismatic and lyrical narrative rich with the colors, sounds, smells, and textures of Miami, Richard Blanco's personal narrative is a resonant account of how he discovered his authentic self and ultimately, a deeper understanding of what it means to be American. His is a singular yet universal story that beautifully illuminates the experience of "becoming;" how we are shaped by experiences, memories, and our complex stories: the humor, love, yearning, and tenderness that define a life.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Starred Review. Growing up in the 1970s in a Cuban-American community in Miami, poet Blanco was besieged by his exiled relatives nostalgia for the life they had left behind in Cuba in the 1960s; yet he also yearned for a American identity free from the immigrant experience. In seven chapters Blanco moves through the milestones of his adolescence living with his mother, father, older brother, Carlos (Caco), and grandparents, specifically his overbearing abuela, who had saved enough money working as a bookie in New York City for the family to move to a new house with a terra-cotta roof and lawn in the Westchester suburb of Miami-pronounced Guechesta. In the first chapter, The First Real San Giving Day, young Ricardo accompanied his abuela to help buy the chicken specials at the Winn-Dixie, a gringo store she highly suspected (We dont belong here); yet her grandson gradually won her over to the American selections such as Easy Cheese and even engineered a Thanksgiving feast for the family that was as foreign as it was instructive. Being chosen as the companion for lovely Deycitas quinceanera ball made Blanco, however, begin to wonder whether he liked girls at all, confirmed by his first dreamy crush on the former Cuban prisoner and new hire at the bodega where he worked for many summers, El Cocuyito (The Firefly). Blanco has a natural, unforced style that allows his characters vibrancy and humor to shine through. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
An award-winning poet's memoir of growing up in Miami as the gay son of Cuban immigrants. Revolution changed Cuba forever. Yet Blanco's (For All of Us, One Today: An Inaugural Poet's Journey, 2013, etc.) family seemed determined to hang on to whatever they could of the lives they knew before Fidel Castro's takeover. Once the family settled in Miami, his parents went to work at an uncle's bodega and ate only Cuban food. Meanwhile, Blanco dreamed of becoming like his gringo school friends who ate "Pop-Tarts, Ritz Crackers and Cool Whip." He tried to introduce his family to American customs like Thanksgiving, only to see those traditions transformed into something with a distinctly Cuban twist. At the same time, Blanco was still fascinated by the country his family had left behind. Not only did they re-create it through the food they sold and ate, but also through the garden that his grandfather planted with the loquat, papaya and avocado trees that reminded them of their "lost [Cuban] paradise." Born in Madrid just before his family left Spain for the United States, the author soon realized that he existed in a world that was neither completely Cuban nor American: He was "a little from everywhere." The homosexual desires that surfaced during adolescence and which he kept hidden from his family only added to his feelings of separateness. As a cure for his love of "unmanly" things like his paint-by-number sets and his cousin's Easy-Bake Oven, Blanco's homophobic grandmother sent him to work at the bodega. In this space of working-class machismo, Blanco came into contact with a closeted Cuban homosexual who told him about the forbidden affair he had with another man before fleeing to the U.S. Their friendship started the author on the journey toward accepting not only his own gayness, but also the "ghosts of Cuba" that haunted him. A warm, emotionally intimate memoir. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
When Blanco was named America's fifth Inaugural poet, he became the first Latino and openly gay man to be so honored. Now, in his memoir of growing up in Miami, he writes of his search for a place where he belonged. Conceived in Cuba, born in Spain, and raised in Miami, he felt rootless as he grew up watching reruns of I Love Lucy, The Brady Bunch, and Bewitched while dreaming of having a real American family. He persuades his bewildered relatives to have a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, with unfortunate results. He finds an unlikely soul mate in an elderly Jewish woman who, like him, is a little from everywhere. He gets a job working in his great uncle's market, a place that comes to seem like home until a new man is hired with whom he falls in love and is forced to accept that he is gay, another outsider condition of being. Filled with colorful characters, often poignant and sometimes melancholy, Blanco's episodic memoir is a meditation on belonging, on self-acceptance, and on his family's almost mystical connection to Cuba.--Cart, Michael Copyright 2014 Booklist
