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 […]

Ah lawdy, lawd, dios mio. Forgive me, but I secretly recorded my daughter and her friend. (There’s an app for that,) I had to. The conversation was just too funny and rich and it showed me all too boldly that my daughter is a cubana en la sangre, for she is fascinated by symbols and […]

Am I Really Bilingual? I think this is an open letter to parents raising bilingual, Spanish-speaking children in America. For parents, like me, whose kids are speaking and reading English at school and hablando un poco de español at home. I have had a realization. A thunderbolt to the cabeza. A “guau” moment about my […]

I spent the day yesterday driving around Nashville, pointing out places of historic interest, like the Parthenon. Places of fame and notoriety: Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge. Places of cool and quirky: I Dream of Weenie. With me was an awesome Cubanita from Miami who is planning to move to Nashville with her husband and 3-year-old son. […]

This weekend, my mom visited Nashville and we celebrated Maria’s 6th birthday. (More on that in another post). We also caught up with a childhood friend of mine who grew up next door to my grandparent’s house in Miami. Because the world is small and full of coincidences, he and his family have lived in […]

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 […]

I found this story as my morning coffee brewed and cracked up in the kitchen all by myself. Florida Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Cuban-American and a Republican, twice hung up on the President-Elect. She thought it was a Miami radio station pranking her. Those guys in Canada who punked Candidate 2012 apparently left their mark […]

I made myself watch Cane again. Que paquete. I’m not even going to get into the fact the main character (Jimmy Smits) is a murderer, or that the balsero sounds like he has marbles in his mouth, or that ew, the main Cubanita marries her adopted brother. I just want to let the Cane writers […]