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Sto caricando le informazioni... Conversations With Cuba (edizione 2001)di C. Peter Ripley
Informazioni sull'operaConversations With Cuba di C. Peter Ripley
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Here is a fresh story behind this passionate, struggling, frequently discouraged, but always proud country, told by ordinary Cuban citizens--the people who still struggle with a revolution that is far from over. Sparked during his high school and college years by his admiration of the Cuban revolution--the first successful bourgeois revolution of the twentieth century--C. Peter Ripley subsequently developed a fascination with Cuban culture that took him on five illegal trips to the struggling country between 1991 and 1997. During his travels, Ripley visited and revisited the Cuban landscape and its people, closely following the lives of citizens who were deeply influenced by the revolution and its effects. Through his experiences and observations, Ripley taps into the reality behind his long-romanticized perceptions of the Cuban Revolution. Conversations with Cuba takes place during the height of the "special period," the ambiguous name given to the years of hardship following the end of the Soviet Union's vital aid to the country, isolated by the U.S.-led embargo, and preceding Cuba's as yet unrealized revitalization. Ripley guides us on a first-person journey through this bustling economy now reduced to soap shortages, one meal a day, and desperate attempts to locate an economic salvation in foreign tourism. He shows us people with a faith and pride in their nation and its revolutionary ideals that is as frequently conflicted as it is fierce. We come to know Pedro, a plumber and black marketeer; Roberto, who introduces Ripley and his companions to the enforced discrimination behind Cuban tourism; and Neddie, a schoolteacher whose early confidence in the Revolution is later seriously challenged by the harsh realities of the "special period." Ripley's most involved relationship is with Paulo, a college student turned black marketeer who becomes Ripley's guide and friend during his travels. Paulo's discontent with his country and his own circumstances is tested through the course of the book, and, guided in part by his foreign guest, he ultimately experiences a drastic transformation, trading his desire to leave Cuba for a new dedication to his heritage and a persistent hope for Cuba's revolutionary future. These individuals and countless others encountered in Conversations with Cuba reveal a moving portrait of a country and an uncommonly civil society shaped by ?patria,? courage, tenacity, and a simultaneously critical and optimistic belief in their revolution, within an ambivalent reality of tension and change. Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
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Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni... GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)972.91064History and Geography North America Mexico, Central America, West Indies, Bermuda West Indies (Antilles) and Bermuda; Caribbean Cuba CubaClassificazione LCVotoMedia:
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He devoted plenty of time to lengthy quotes from those friends about their daily lives and thoughts about the Revolution. I was especially interested in a deeply humane, insightful comment by Victor, a man who had been involved in the Revolution and was still a staunch supporter of the world's last Marxist government:
The author (who is definitely the protagonist -- the introduction makes a big deal about the drawbacks of journalistic "objectivity") is a Baby Boomer and comes at this from a very Boomer perspective. He's constantly responding to assumptions his generation has about Cuba -- Communism made them all miserable and starving -- that my generation doesn't share, or even think about much. Which is fine; the book was published when I was in college, so that was his audience. The book is at its best, though, when Ripley is quoting Cubans and giving context, rather than editorializing.
Because good grief, his overwritten romanticizing! He insists upon referring to Cuba with a female pronoun, and every other sentence is a forced metaphor of the form: "Paulo was young and on the make, like Cuba herself" [paraphrase]. He also has a vaguely gross, exoticizing attitude toward young women, using phrases like "an innocent cry by a latte-colored beauty" [not, unfortunately, a paraphrase] and portraying Castro's crackdown on Cuban prostitutes as primarily affecting foreign men who no longer came on vacation and the trickle-down effect on Cuba's economy. No exploration at all of the forced choices many of those women were likely making. He couldn't even bring himself to straight-up use the word "prostitution," describing them only as girls looking for entertainment that they couldn't afford if foreign men weren't paying.
I went back and forth between rolling my eyes and being fascinated by this American portrayal of 1990s Cuba. I'm glad I read it, I think, but I definitely need an updated perspective -- ideally by a Cuban woman. ( )