Arts and Literature of Cuba

Many of those who fled Castro’s Cuba settled in the Little Havana neighborhood of Miami. This restaurant on southwestern Eighth Street—known in the neighborhood as Calle Ocho—is decorated with an elaborate mural depicting American and Cuban heroes.

Havana to be an anti-Castro screed. “I didn’t set out to write a political novel or a political memoir,” he says. I’m not driven by ideology. I’m driven by absolute abhorrence for totalitarianism in any way, shape or form. What I wanted to do in the book was show how a political system can try to crush an indi- vidual soul and also how it can crush and demolish families and the price one has to pay for an ideology. In 2010, Eire published another memoir, Learning to Die in Miami: Confessions of a Cuban Refugee . This one covered his often painful adjustment to life in the United States.

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Arts and Literature of Cuba