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Arts and Literature of Cuba
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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.
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.