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Summary
Summary
Ivonne Lamazares is one of the most original and exciting new voices on the literary scene. Born and raised in Cuba, she writes of her homeland with unmatched authenticity, immediacy, and poetry. The story of a mother and daughter who flee to American shores, THE SUGAR ISLAND depicts a culture in conflict with itself, where the old world chafes against the new and where a parent's desperate grab for freedom has dire consquences for her child. Remarkably, the events and potent emotions the novel evokes take place not today or yesterday, but at the height of Castro's revolution four decades ago.
The story is told in the brave, tough voice of Tanya, a girl on the verge of womanhood, who is at odds with her mother and with the rapidly changing world around her. In the wake of the revolution, Tanya's mother -- passionate and unreliable -- is determined to leave Cuba at all costs. She is also determined to take her reluctant daughter with her. Tanya is unsure of her mother's motives, and equally unsure of her love. When at last they embark on the perilous sea voyage to freedom, they leave behind the ruins of old Havana and a ravaged landscape. What they face in America, though, is far from certain.
In this embattled mother-daughter relationship lie echoes of the conflicts wrenching apart their tiny country. With economical prose and a clear-eyed vision, Lamazares evokes lives full of hope but fraught with obstacles in the face of dramatic change. Her novel is both prescient and remarkably insightful.
Author Notes
Ivonne Lamazares was born in Cuba in 1962. Her mother died when she was three, & she was raised by her grandparents in Old Havana. She emigrated to Florida at the age of fourteen & currently lives in South Miami with her husband, the poet Steve Kronen, & her daughter. Lamazares is on the faculty of Miami-Dade Community College, where she received an endowed chair for excellence in teaching literature, & her short stories have appeared in "Blue Mesa Review" & "Michigan Quarterly Review."
Lamazares was discovered at the Sewanee Writers' Conference when she had written little more than the beginning of "The Sugar Island." Her teachers were so taken with her work that they introduced her to an agent, & soon after, she signed a book contract. About the sudden attention her writing has received, she says, "I still can't explain this. It's like being in a car that's out of control, going somewhere you never expected to go." She lives in South Miami, Florida.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
HTanya, the teenage protagonist of Havana-born Lamazares's timely and memorable debut, comes of age amid the political and social turbulence of Cuba in the late '60s and early '70s. This spare, lyrical and brilliantly observant novel holds an ironic twist: Tanya has a greater grasp of reality than her mother. Both characters are fascinating, strong-minded individuals: "Mam " is reckless and recalcitrant, but has winning ways and a unique sense of humor, while Tanya is stubborn and practical, even as she admits that she and her mother are "splinters from the same unblessed stick." The familial struggle is exacerbated by the hardships of day-to-day life in Cuba, especially the constant surveillance by neighborhood watchdogs, known as CDR. The novel begins in 1958 when Mam leaves five-year-old Tanya to join Fidel Castro's rebel army in the mountains near their village; she returns a year later, disillusioned and pregnant by a rebel cook. The narrative then skips to 1966, when, in a town across the bay from Havana, Tanya is a bright and sassy 13-year-old schooled in the virtues of communism her half-brother, Emanuel, is seven and a talented musician; and Mam , quixotic as ever, is planning the family's escape to Miami. The plan fails, Mam is sent to prison and the children must live with an elderly distant relative, a nearly blind piano teacher whose Catholic faith helps her to cope with the restrictive regime. But Mam is both uncurably romantic and indomitable; on her release, she continues to dream of escape and forces Tanya to join her attempt to cross "the black water" on a makeshift raft. This is only the halfway point in a story whose suspense builds to a dramatic climax and a bittersweet denouement. In addition to the mother-daughter conflict, the irony of life in Castro's CubaDdepicted here as a land of food shortages and literacy campaigns, a godless society where people attend mass or believe in voodoo and where a young girl like Tanya cannot summon any faith at allDcomes across clearly in the hands of this talented new writer. Agent, Gail Hochman. Author tour; rights sold in France, Germany, Italy and Holland. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Cuban American writer Lamazares' first novel conjures a specific time and place and tells a timeless and universal tale of the struggle for love and autonomy between mothers and daughters. In Cuba in 1958, Tanya, Lamazares' impressively cogent narrator, is six when her sexy and restless unwed mother heads for the mountains to become a rebel guerrillera. Mam quickly returns, pregnant with her son. Seven years later, disgusted with the communists, Mam attempts to escape to the U.S. The destitute trio ends up living uneasily with Tanya's kind great aunt, while Mam tangles with the authorities and Tanya learns more than she wants to know about the tyranny of politics, religion, and sex. Bred-in-the-bone nonconformists, mother and daughter eventually make it to Miami, where they find that the rules are different, but the game is essentially the same. Lamazares' evocatively understated style gives full reign to the profound irony and sorrow inherent in her magnetic characters' conflicts with each other and with society. --Donna Seaman
School Library Journal Review
Adult/High School-A novel of Cuba in the 1960s. A "slippery heart" is how Tanya thinks of her mother, and her love for the woman is shadowed by distrust. When her daughter was five, Mama ran off to join the revolution, leaving Tanya with her grandmother. Mama reappeared a year later, pregnant and disen-chanted. From then on, she is determined to leave Cuba for a better life; the stronger her determination, the stronger Tanya's opposi-tion becomes. Her first attempt, when the girl is 13, fails. Mama is sent away for "rehabilitation," and Tanya and her brother are sent to live with a distant relative. Tanya meets Paula, a schoolmate who becomes her best friend and confidante, teaching her the facts of life. Tanya's sexual awakening comes later, when she meets a revolutionary officer whom she loves and with whom she lives for a short time. When Mama returns and goes to work in a matchbox factory, life stabilizes for awhile, but the woman is still determined to flee, and eventually succeeds, with Tanya protesting until the last minute, but giving in and leaving with her. The relationship between mother and daughter is the focus of this beautifully written novel, but the background of life during the Communist revolution is equally well developed. The beauty, the culture, the difficulties, the characters-all are vividly portrayed.-Sydney Hausrath, Kings Park Library, Burke, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
An adolescent girl juggles the personal and the political in a debut that moves from Castro's Cuba to South Florida in the 1960s. Mirella, a flighty woman whose once revolutionary fervor has turned to disgust, has one goal: to escape Cuba. Tanya, her teenaged daughter, finds her mother's judgment (and her motivation) suspect. The most effective part of this largely successful tale focuses on the dance these two antagonists do in order to get what they want. If Tanya's goals are less defined, it's because she's young and uncertain. But she knows two things with certainty: she doesn't want to leave Cuba, and she doesn't trust her mother. In Cuba, compelling oppositions--Santería vs. Catholicism; Communism vs. Capitalism; the Revolution vs. the Reality--animate the cast of characters. Melena, a sympathetic grandmother figure, struggles for control of Tanya and Tanya's younger brother Emanuel, but she's fighting a mother and a system. Paula, the pretty neighbor, confuses glamour with freedom and finds herself at odds with the Revolution. CompaÑero Andres, a young bureaucrat from an undisclosed "ministry," introduces Tanya to the verities of the Revolution, but the vagaries of the heart. Meanwhile, Mirella, a powerfully drawn figure, exerts her will by appearing will-less. Her scams, though, run her into conflict with Andres and with "Lolo," a corrupt low-level official who practices a voodoo-istic Santería. Something of a plot begins to boil, and an adventure at sea ensues. Lamazares's sharp eye for the tensions on native soil doesn't fare as well in the Miami section, but the story's momentum carries forward to a satisfying if open end. Familiar turf with a fresh mix. Echoes of Graham Greene's tropical corruption, Ha Jin's absurd predicaments, and Sandra Cisneros's stylized restraint enrich what is essentially a mother/daughter conflict. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Tanya, her mother, and other refugees courageouslyDor foolishlyDset out in a homemade raft, leaving Cuba for a new life in Florida. But this is not the familiar story of today's headlines, nor is it the tale of the horrific voyage itself. Rather, the novel tells of a young girl growing up and coming of age in Cuba in the early 1960s, during the first years of the Cuban Revolution. Unreliable and unpredictable, Tanya's mother lives for her own passions. Outside home, life for Tanya is equally irregular, as she learns to cope in a world rife with broken friendships, distrust, suspicion, and betrayal, all the while retaining her intrinsic sweetness, decency, and sense of self. Lamazares (literature, Miami-Dade Community Coll.) was born in Cuba and moved to Florida as a young teenager, and her short stories have been published widely. This excellent first novel, discovered at the Sewanee Writers Conference, calls to mind the sensitivity and the poetic, compact writings of Cristina Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban (LJ 3/1/92). Highly recommended for all public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/00.]DMary Margaret Benson, Linfield Coll. Lib., McMinnville, OR (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
"Listen to me," Mama commanded..."This country is just a backwater plaintain grove. Now and forever." She wiped her hands on her apron until she left a dark circle. "Tanya, mija, our life is about to start." Mama always wanted to start life just as I wanted to start a new notebook at school, with neat and crisp lines, waiting to be filled in with important dates and bright colors. She touched my arm and whispered, "Cousin Romy is coming for us. Tomorrow or the next day we could wake up in Cayo Hueso, or Me-a- me." Mama whispered "Me-a-me" the same way Emanuel and I ate ripe bananas--with greedy, sticky pleasure. Copyright (c) 2000 by Ivonne Lamazares Excerpted from The Sugar Island by Ivonne Lamazares All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
