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| Arte Publico Press |
My heart belonged to
the South, but somehow
I knew I could not escape the North.--- Gerald Poyo
Revealing.
Well researched. Engaging.
Whether
Gerald Poyo is writing about Cubans in exile or the island’s struggle for
independence or about his great-great-great grandfather who was a lector for
Cuban cigar workers (like in the film Anna in the Tropics), his writing has always
been well-researched and detailed, as is his new book.
Poyo
turns to family again in A LATINO MEMOIR: EXPLORING IDENTITY, FAMILY AND THE
COMMON GOOD. The author is tracing his family’s
roots across five generations and two continents. The writing is wonderfully descriptive and
engaging. It’s interesting to learn about our ancestors, their passions and
dreams, and realize that those traits are within us.
SUMMARY: In a bumpy, anxiety-producing plane ride
across the Straits of Florida to Cuba in 1979, graduate student Gerald Poyo
knew his life would either end that day in the World War II-era prop airplane
or change forever. He survived the trip, and his ten-day visit solidified his
academic research and confirmed his career as a history professor. In this wide-ranging examination of his
relatives' migrations in the Western Hemisphere, the Americas, over five
generations, Poyo uses his training as a historian to unearth his family's
stories. Beginning with his great-great grandfather's flight from Cuba to Key
West in 1869, this is also about the loss of a beloved homeland.
His father was Cuban;
his mother was from Flint, Michigan. Poyo himself was six months old when his
parents took him to Bogota, Colombia. He celebrated his eighth birthday in New
Jersey and his tenth in Venezuela. He was 12 when he landed in Buenos Aires,
where he spent his formative years before returning to the United States for
college. "My heart belonged to the South, but somehow I knew I could not
escape the North," he writes. Transnationalism shaped his life and
identity.
Divided into two
parts, the first section traces his parents and ancestors as he links their
stories to impersonal movements in the world, Spanish colonialism, Cuban
nationalism, United States expansionism that influenced their lives. The second
half explores how exile, migration and growing up a "hemispheric American,
a borderless American" impacted his own development and stimulated
questions about poverty, religion and relations between Latin America and the
United States. Ultimately, this thought-provoking memoir unveils the universal
desire for a safe, stable life for one's family.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Born in New Jersey, Gerald Poyo grew up in Bogota, Colombia;
Caracas, Venezuela; and Buenos Aires, Argentina. As a graduate student, he
studied Latin American and U.S. Latino history. He worked as a research
associate and curator at the University of Texas Institute of Texan Cultures at
San Antonio before taking a faculty position at Florida International
University in Miami. Poyo is the author of several books, including Exile
and Revolution: José D. Poyo, Key West, and Cuban Independence
(University Press of Florida, 2019) and Cuban
Catholics in the United States, 1960-1980 (University of Notre Dame
Press, 2007).
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