Bøger af Achy Obejas

"RICH AND SONOROUS PROSE . . . There's plenty of reason to hope for the future of a fiction that welcomes writers with such a passionate sense of the past.”-San Jose Mercury NewsOn New Year's Day, 1959, Alejandra San José was born in Havana, entering the world through the heart of revolution. Fearing the turmoil brewing in Cuba, her parents took Ale and fled to the shores of North America-ending up in Chicago amid a close community of Cuban refugees. As an adult, Ale becomes an interpreter, which takes her back to her homeland for the first time. There, she makes her way back through San José history, uncovering new fragments of truth about the relatives who struggled with their own identities so long ago. For the San Josés, ostensibly Catholics, are actually Jews. They are conversos who converted to Christianity during the Spanish Inquisition. As Alejandra struggles to confront what it is to be Cuban and American, Catholic and Jewish, she translates her father's troubling youthful experiences into the healing language of her own heart."Lyrically written, Days of Awe reflects the way Cuban Spanish is spoken with poetic rhythm and frankness.”-Ms."An ambitious work . . . A deft talent whose approach to sex, religion, and ethnicity is keenly provocative.” -Miami Herald"With intelligent, intense writing, Obejas approaches . . . the heady climes of Cuban American stalwarts Oscar Hijuelos and Cristina Garcia.”-Library Journal (starred review)

Memory Mambo describes the life of Juani Casas, a 25-year-old Cuban-born American lesbian who manages her familys laundromat in Chicago while trying to cope with family, work, love, sex, and the weirdness of North American culture. Achy Obejass writing is sharp and mordantly funny. She understands perfectly how the romance of exilefrom a homeland as well as from heterosexualityand the mundane reality of everyday life balance one another. Memory Mambo is ultimately very moving in its depiction of what it means to find a new and finally safe sense of home.

Obejas's stories of contemporary Cuba explore how history and fate intrude on even the most ordinary of lives.

Leonardo Padura and other Cuban writers join editor Obejas to plumb a city of ironic and wrenching contradictions.