It is no easy thing to reject the heart of what one’s own family, and people, preaches. Particularly, perhaps, if you are Cuban-American. (If you know Cubans, this needs no further explanation.) But, it appears that, at the risk of being called communist, socialist, estúpido and comemierda, an historic percentage of my generation, combined with […]

Dear free-born, democratic country-living American friend…or stranger, here is something you can read before you once again utter the statement: “But at least in Cuba they have free health care and free education.” Not really true. And at what cost? Check out the photos from a 6th grade classroom in the Rocky Mountain state. They […]

The idea for Los Pollitos Dicen, the line of Spanish baby tees I co-launched with a Cuban-American friend, came in 2004. We took off in 2005. The goal was to capture the color of our culture for the children of a new generation, a generation that would likely get less of the loving crazy Latinisms […]

Miami was delicious. I was there to witness the unveiling of General Mills’ revamped Que Rica Vida site. It was awesome. General Mills comes off of this looking genius in the way it has smartly reached out in such a huge way to Latinos, Latino media and Latina/os who blog. Plus, my father just called […]

From Time magazine, a story on the growing number of Cuban-Americans who want to lift the embargo and travel ban. A couple of quotes: The survey by Miami-based Bendixen & Associates, the largest Hispanic polling firm, also found that 48% of older and more conservative Cuban exiles known as historicos support lifting the prohibition, up from […]

NPR keeps me company while I cook dinner.I had to put my knife down to take in the whole of this story. Cuban journalists who work at the paper Juventud Rebelde (Rebel Youth) are doing actual investigative pieces. The word “journalist” is used loosely when it comes to the island nation, which controls the media […]

Car’ai, this post was intended to be longer and poetic and maybe even funny, but I’m headed to Geek Squad con PDF problemas. Oy. So, without the fluff, let me tell you about Marta’s new Cuban cookbook. You know Marta from My Big Fat Cuban Family. If you don’t. Go there now. Hang out, read […]

Yoani Sanchez is quickly becoming a personal hero of mine. When I heard this story on NPR this morning, I could not stop smiling, could not stop shaking my head at her audacity and courage and smarts and big you-know-whats. If you don’t know about Sanchez, she’s a Cuban in Cuba who blogs about Cuba […]

My mom has a pretty hilarious childhood friend who tells great stories. She hasn’t been in the states too long and so, lived most of her life under dictatorship. When I was in Miami in January she came to visit and had me both bent over in laughter, and head hung in sadness, with tales […]