The other side of paradise : life in the new Cuba / Julia Cooke.
Material type:
TextPublisher: Berkeley, California : Seal Press, [2014]Description: 236 pages ; 21 cmContent type: - text
- unmediated
- volume
- 1580055311 (paperback)
- 9781580055314 (paperback) :
- Castro, Fidel, 1926- -- Influence
- Social change -- Cuba -- Havana -- History -- 21st century
- Young adults -- Cuba -- Havana -- Biography
- Cuba -- History -- 1990- -- Biography
- Cuba -- Politics and government -- 1990-
- Havana (Cuba) -- Biography
- Havana (Cuba) -- Social conditions -- 21st century
- Havana (Cuba) -- Social life and customs -- 21st century
| Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Book
|
Main Library | NonFiction | 972.9123 C772 | Available | 33111007530955 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
Change looms in Havana, Cuba's capital, a city electric with uncertainty yet cloaked in cliché90 miles from U.S. shores and off-limits to most Americans. Journalist Julia Cooke, who lived there at intervals over a period of five years, discovered a dynamic scene: baby-faced anarchists with Mohawks gelled with laundry soap, whiskey-drinking children of the elite, SanterÃtrainees, pregnant prostitutes, university graduates planning to leave for the first country that will give them a visa.
This last generation of Cubans raised under Fidel Castro animate life in a waning era of political stagnation as the rest of the world beckons: waiting out storms at rummy hurricane parties and attending raucous drag cabarets, planning ascendant music careers and black-market business ventures, trying to reconcile the undefined future with the urgent today.
Eye-opening and politically prescient, The Other Side of Paradise offers a deep new understanding of a place that has so confounded and intrigued us.
Includes bibliographical references (pages [234]-236).
"Over a period of five years, beginning when Fidel Castro stepped down from his presidency after almost a half-century of reign, journalist Julia Cooke embedded herself in Cuba, gaining access to a dynamic Havana--one that she found populated with twenty-five-year-old Marxist philosophy students, baby-faced anarchists, children of the whiskey-drinking elite, Santería trainees, pregnant prostitutes, and more. Combining intimate storytelling with in-depth reportage, The Other Side of Paradise weaves together stories of the Cubans whom Cooke encountered, providing a vivid and unprecedented look into the daily lives and future prospects of young people in Cuba today. From ambitious Lucía, a recent university graduate with an acerbic sense of humor and plans to leave Cuba for the first country to give her a visa, if she can just get the roadblocks out of the way--to a crew of mohawk-wearing teenage anarchists who toss bricks at police cars and cite lyrics by The Clash (but don't know the lead singer's name), the characters of The Other Side of Paradise paint a captivating portrait of Cuban culture and the emerging legacy of Fidel Castro's failed promises. Eye-opening and politically prescient, The Other Side of Paradise is sure to linger in readers' minds long after they've finished reading"-- Provided by publisher.