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Learning to Die in Miami
Carlos Eire
Confessions of a Refugee Boy
Free Press
November 2010
On Sale: November 2, 2010
320 pages
ISBN: 143918190X
EAN: 9781439181904
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
In his 2003 National Book Award–winning memoir Waiting for
Snow in Havana, Carlos Eire narrated his coming of age in
Cuba just before and during the Castro revolution. That book
literally ends in midair as eleven-year-old Carlos and his
older brother leave Havana on an airplane—along with
thousands of other children—to begin their new life in Miami
in 1962. It would be years before he would see his mother
again. He would never again see his beloved father. Learning to Die in Miami opens as the plane lands and Carlos
faces, with trepidation and excitement, his new life. He
quickly realizes that in order for his new American self to
emerge, his Cuban self must "die." And so, with great
enterprise and purpose, he begins his journey. We follow Carlos as he adjusts to life in his new home.
Faced with learning English, attending American schools, and
an uncertain future, young Carlos confronts the age-old
immigrant’s plight: being surrounded by American bounty, but
not able to partake right away. The abundance America has to
offer excites him and, regardless of how grim his living
situation becomes, he eagerly forges ahead with his own
personal assimilation program, shedding the vestiges of his
old life almost immediately, even changing his name to
Charles. Cuba becomes a remote and vague idea in the back of
his mind, something he used to know well, but now it "had
ceased to be part of the world." But as Carlos comes to grips with his strange surroundings,
he must also struggle with everyday issues of growing up.
His constant movement between foster homes and the eventual
realization that his parents are far away in Cuba bring on
an acute awareness that his life has irrevocably changed.
Flashing back and forth between past and future, we watch as
Carlos balances the divide between his past and present
homes and finds his way in this strange new world, one that
seems to hold the exhilarating promise of infinite
possibilities and one that he will eventually claim as his own. An exorcism and an ode, Learning to Die in Miami is a
celebration of renewal—of those times when we’re certain we
have died and then are somehow, miraculously, reborn.
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