Arts and Literature of Cuba

Confessions of a Cuban Boy . The morning referenced was January 1, 1959—the morning dictator Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba as Fidel Castro’s rebel forces advanced on the capital city. Carlos Eire, eight years old when Castro came to power, had been born into a privileged family. His father was an influ-

Educational Video

Scan here to see Carlos Eire read a passage from Learning to Die in Miami:

ential and respected judge. Like many other Cubans, his mother soon became alarmed by the turn toward authoritari- anism, and then communism, that the Castro government took. She worried about her children’s future. So, in 1962, she put Carlos and his older brother, Tony, on a flight to Miami by themselves, as part of a program known as Operation Peter Pan. The brothers expected to be reunited quickly with their parents. But more than three years would pass before their mother was able to leave Cuba. They never saw their father again. In adulthood, Carlos Eire became a professor of history and religious studies, ultimately winding up at Yale University. The books he wrote were all scholarly volumes—until 2003’s Waiting for Snow in Havana . The memoir of his childhood in Cuba won a National Book Award. “Fidel’s Cuba,” Eire once remarked, “is the deepest circle of hell.” But, he insists, he didn’t intend for Waiting for Snow in

Voices from Exile 65