Carlos EireBesprekingen

This beautiful memoir, has left me with much to think about. It was heartbreaking at times (especially that unnumbered chapter), but it was also filled with lots of fun and precious memories. I loved the richness of the author’s descriptive writing, his use of metaphors, and how each chapter felt like a story, with yet another adventure from his life. It was interesting to read (from the postscript) that he took 4 months to write the book and so lovely that each time he wrote a new chapter, he read it out aloud to his children. This was a Bookclub read and I’m looking forward to discussing it with the others, soon.

Vintage photos 1930-1950 Cuba
Pedro Pan Website
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Reading Guide (Simon and Schuster)½

Carlos Eire’s Reformations: The Early Modern World, 1450-1650 is a brick of a book that attempts to cover a vast topic: the Protestant Reformation, its causes and consequences, with a focus on western Europe but also some coverage of the Americas, Africa, and Asia. (Scandinavia and eastern Europe get short shrift here.) That Eire was attempting to make this “a narrative for beginners and nonspecialists” makes the task he took on here even more daunting. It’s not one that I think he succeeded at.

Eire clearly has a wide-ranging knowledge of early modern history, but I had a number of issues with his characterisation of medieval religion (very clearly not his area of expertise) and indeed how he thinks of what “religion” is. He argues again and again for “religion” as a driving force in history that needs to be studied on its own terms, but never grapples with the fact that his concept of “religion” is one posited on a lot of assumptions that what “religion” is is what Christianity looks like. (See also, for instance, the fact that Eire at one point near the end of the book refers to Christianity as “Europe’s ancestral religion”—hoo boy, and that definitely ensured I wasn’t surprised to google him and find that he’s the kind of Christian who talks blithely about “Judeo-Christian values.”)

His grasp of early modern history is also not total—while I’m not an early modernist, I am Irish, and there were a couple of times that his brief references to what was happening in Ireland made me blink.

This is also a determinedly old-school history: an intellectual/political history that’s largely driven by elites and in which women scarcely appear as actors. (There’s perhaps a page in which Eire acknowledges that histories of women in the Reformation exist, but snidely dismisses them as ideological axe grinding—ironically enough on the grounds that they dare to ask the same kinds of questions (were women better off because of the Reformation? worse?) that he chastises historians in his conclusion for not daring to ask of the Reformation more generally.) And while it’s laudable that Eire tackles the spread of European Christianity to other parts of the world during the early modern period—a topic that most textbooks on Europe during the period often ignore—his characterisation of missionary activities made me suck my teeth more than once. Missionaries and their work are referred to as “heroic”; the “success” of missions is calculated in terms of numbers of converts. Eire might not outright talk about civilizing the natives, but the implications are clear, and distasteful.

Cramming more than two centuries of complex global history into fewer than 900 pages is a feat of concision. Yet I feel like it’s still probably going to be overwhelming for most “beginners and nonspecialists”, and the average undergrad would probably balk on being assigned this. Eire’s language (“hermeneutic”, “soteriology”, “dialectic”, etc) wouldn’t help there either. Yet it would also be an odd fit in a graduate seminar, I think: no footnotes, and determinedly Anglophone and overwhelmingly male bibliography.

The very word “Reformation” is a product of the English-speaking world’s Protestant orientation, which saw Luther’s 1517 announcement as a “reform” of something, but of course his Catholic counterparts saw him more as a rebel. Seeing history more broadly, as this book does, helps recognize that, in fact, there were multiple such “reformations”, all triggered by events of the 1400s, including the invention of the printing press, discovery of the New World, long-running changes in the relationship between monarchs and the nobility, etc. etc.

Unlike other accounts, which focus just on the historical events, the author offers extensive commentary on the act of history writing itself, and how views shift over time. The last two chapters (“Consequences” and “Epilogue”) are an especially good summary from this perspective and are worth reading alone if you already are familiar with the history itself.

This is solid, but with so many options out there, I have high standards for general histories of the reformation(s). Eire's is good, particularly in setting the scene, and on Catholicism during the period. The chapters on the various Reformation churches were weaker, I thought, and the final section was somewhere in between. Eire occasionally flashes a very tedious contrarian streak (i.e., if you dare to explain things, particularly if you try to explain things rather than just assuming that they are exactly how they present themselves, you are damned). But he writes well, and his book is admirably wide-ranging in terms of its foci. On the whole, though, Chadwick's telling is briefer, and MacCulloch's more compelling.

A thorough book covering the history of both the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation. However, I thought towards the end, the book delved too deeply into tangential information (like the history of witch hunts in Europe), that could have been covered in another volume or not at all.

I sat down to read a few pages and was completely drawn into it. Although it is nominally a memoir, he moves around and remembers the way a child does. His childhood doesn't seem all that different to a child in the 50s in the US until it comes quite vividly different. I loved his writing style and the raw emotion he shared. Wonderfully written and extremely evocative.

Considering that Carlos Eire was only eleven years old when he left Cuba, this book could have gone wrong in a lot of different ways. From a certain perspective, it's nothing but a series of childhood reminiscences, not too different from the kind that any upper-middle class Cuban boy of his generation might have. He talks about Cuba's beautiful skies, its seashore, its daily rituals, and a bit about its fragile social structure. But he mines this material for all that it's worth. And specifically because his life is now a closed book, every one of these forty brief chapters is impregnated with terrible longing and loss. It also helps that the author's got a sharp eye, a good sense of structure -- these little chapters frequently connect to others or circle back on themselves -- and a well-developed sense of irony. Considering that his father -- athough often kind, caring and boyishly playful -- actually seems to have believed himself to be a reincarnation of Louis XIV of France, he probably needed that last quality.

But "Waiting for Snow in Havana" also goes deeper, in some ways, than the average midlife memoir has to. Like Eire, I moved countries at a young age, although, unlike him, I've never been any sort of refugee. Even so, I found parts of this book excruciatingly difficult to read, and the author's description of the profound effect that this event had on not just his life but on his deepest self rings very true. Eire still considers him fundamentally, inalterably Cuban, and the reader can sense how the memories he includes here have sustained him throughout his life. At the same time, the rude shock of being separated from his family and culture and losing his social status also shaped his adulthood. In its last chapters, we can see that "Waiting for Snow in Havana" is much more than an exercise in upper-class nostalgia. Eire fully embraces the fact that he had to face great adversity and grow from it: he's turned his exile and the sometimes fragmentary memories he took from Cuba into a way to discover himself and who he is. This book won't suit anyone, but I suspect that lots of people who's had suffered a serious geographic dislocation at some point during their lives -- who've had to leave everything behind and move on -- will find it to be seriously inspiring testimony.

Half a millennium after a lone monk began a theological dispute that eventually tore Western Christendom asunder both religiously and politically, does the event known as the Reformation still matter? In his book Reformations: The Early Modern Era, 1450-1650, Carlos M.N. Eire determined to examine the entire period leading up to and through the epoch of the Reformation. An all-encompassing study for beginners and experts looks to answer that question.

Eire divided his large tome into four parts: On the Edge, Protestants, Catholics, and Consequences. This division helps gives the book both focusing allowing the reader to see the big picture at the same time. The 50-60 years covered in “On the Edge” has Eire go over the strands of theological, political, and culture thoughts and developments that led to Luther’s 95 theses. “Protestants” goes over the Martin Luther’s life then his theological challenge to the Church and then the various versions of Protestantism as well as the political changes that were the result. “Catholics” focused on the Roman Church’s response to the theological challenges laid down by Protestants and how the answers made at the Council of Trent laid the foundations of the modern Catholicism that lasted until the early 1960s. “Consequences” focused on the clashes between the dual Christian theologies in religious, political, and military spheres and how this clash created a divide that other ideas began to challenge Christianity in European thought.

Over the course of almost 760 out of the 920 pages, Eire covers two centuries worth of history in a variety of ways to give the reader a whole picture of this period of history. The final approximately 160 pages are of footnotes, bibliography, and index is for more scholarly readers while not overwhelming beginner readers. This decision along with the division of the text was meant mostly for casual history readers who overcome the prospect of such a huge, heavy book.

Reformations: The Early Modern Era, 1450-1650 sees Europe’s culture change from its millennium-long medieval identity drastically over the course of two centuries even as Europe starts to affect the rest of the globe. Carlos N.M. Eire authors a magnificently written book that gives anyone who wonders if the Reformation still matters, a very good answer of if they ask the question then yes it still does. So if you’re interested to know why the Reformation matters, this is the book for you.½

Confessions of a CUban Boy. Read. Not great. DIdn't seem to be informative

This is the only memoire I've read by someone who lived through Castro's take over of Cuba. The author was 9 or 10-years old when the Revolution took place. By the time he was 11, Fidel was firmly in power, and his parents sent him to the U.S. where he knew no one. It took his mother 3 and a half years to secure an exit permit and join him, and he never saw his father again. It is a compelling portrait of the rich childhood he had, the adaptations he had to make as an exile, and how his Cuban culture influenced his experience of America. He went on to become a professor of History and Religion and did not plan to write a memoire. When the news story of Elian Gonzalez emerged the story more or less demanded to be written. The writing is quirky and interesting. It's not one of my all time favorite books, but I would definitely recommend it.

Eire was a young child of the ruling class when the Cuban Revolution came. Before, he had attended school with Battista's children and had lived in a mansion stuffed with the valuable artifacts and collections of his distant, eccentric father. As a boy, Carlos lived an idyllic life, surrounded by wealth and by many fond relatives, and he was allowed to run wild through his beloved Havana neighborhood.

The adult writing the book still resents Fidel for ruining the lives of the rich and for the many restrictions and the hard times that have impacted all Cubans since the revolution. But he's got nothing good to say about the benefits to the poor of universal health care and universal education on the island. He's also furious at the father who would not leave Cuba and who adopted a boy who abused Carlos and his brother.

Carlos seems to resent Fidel more for his long boring speeches than for the vast changes he made in Cuba, but perhaps this is what a young boy would notice the most. Of course there is some justification for Eire's loathing of Fidel - his entire world was devastated as he spent years of his American life in institutions and in foster care, until his mother finally arrived. In the US, Carlos and his family suffered through poverty, not unlike dark skinned Cubans up until Fidel came to power.

Although I am generally sympathetic to Fidel and Che, I can recognize good writing and how tough it was for this boy in those times.

B&C 11-12/16 The COntarini Angle by Mark Noll, seeming thorough critique of Reformation

The following article is located at: http://www.booksandculture.com/articles/2016/novdec/contarini-angle.html

The Contarini Angle
Reformations, plural.
Mark Noll | posted 10/17/2016

Against such poisons, Carlos Eire's magnificent survey of "the early modern world" offers just the right antidote of seasoned historical judgment and the best kind of stimulant for thoughtful reflection on the history of Christianity in the dense interweave of religion, culture, and society at the dawn of modern Europe.

This last reservation was crucial, since, with the exception of sectarian movements like the Anabaptism of Menno Simons, enduring Protestant movements advanced only where city councils or local monarchs assumed control of church as well as state.

But what about criticisms? Some historians will not agree that, after Europe divided religiously, trust in science became the chief replacement for trust in God. The book itself documents the orthodox theology of main promoters of the scientific revolution like Johannes Kepler and Robert Boyle. Eire's handling of Galileo's censure by Rome also plays down the contribution of Italian political in-fighting to what mistakenly can seem a simple conflict between religion and science. Better to go with the conclusion of Brad Gregory's Unintended Reformation that the eventual hegemony of scientific learning came only after the destabilization of authority that occurred when Protestants exalted the individual conscience—and Catholics responded by harshly regulating free inquiry.

An ever-present Christ, and not a distant deity, inspired Anabaptists as an example to follow even through the fire. The same emphasis long endured as the heart of Protestant popular piety, as in the Heidelberg's Catechism assurance that "my only comfort, in life and death [is] that I belong … not to myself, but to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ."

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Next year the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther's promulgation of his Ninety-Five Theses will provide more than the usual temptations for abusing historical memory. Luther sites in the former East Germany are already suffering from commercial hype, some serious Catholics and Protestants are gearing up for another round of theological finger-pointing, less serious Protestants could be infected by fervent but ill-informed hagiography. Against such poisons, Carlos Eire's magnificent survey of "the early modern world" offers just the right anbuttidote of seasoned historical judgment and the best kind of stimulant for thoughtful reflection on the history of Christianity in the dense interweave of religion, culture, and society at the dawn of modern Europe.

The volume's only possible drawback is its length, which at about 400,000 words cannot be gobbled down in a hurry, but demands the most careful savoring. In compensation, what so many words can offer—along with 23 pages of compact notes, another 74 pages devoted to bibliography, and 152 well-chosen images from the period—is four books for the price of one: a broadly researched and well-balanced account of church reform before 1517 (130 pages); an empathetic, but not uncritical narrative of what has been traditionally called the Reformation (234 pages); a wide-ranging narrative describing Catholic reforms that expanded and deepened after Protestantism emerged (156 pages); and a rich interpretation of "consequences" for theology, popular religion, politics, science, high culture, education, and more in the wake of the Protestant and Catholic reformations (235 pages).

Although the book deserves an all-day colloquium to properly consider its organization, emphases, and arguments, one place to begin is by identifying Eire's overall point of view. It might be called "early modern history from the Contarini Angle." Gasparo Contarini (1483-1542), an influential Venetian politician who eventually became a Catholic cardinal and priest (in that order), also served as an advisor to Pope Paul III (1534-49) as the latter labored desperately to staunch the ecclesiastical bleeding caused by the likes of Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, John Calvin, Henry VIII of England, and Menno Simons. Contarini was also the author of a 1516 tract, On the Episcopal Office, which a year before Luther's famous Theses blasted the church's higher clergy for failing in their spiritual duties. In 1537 he fired off a similar salvo, On the Mending of the Church, denouncing the "evil morals" and "innumerable scandals" that corrupted the Catholic priesthood. Then in 1541 he pulled together a meeting in southeastern Germany, at Regensburg, that recruited major leaders from both sides in an effort at reconciling break-away Protestants to the church. Protestants in attendance included Luther's chief lieutenant, Philip Melanchthon, and the reformer of Strasburg (also active later in England) Martin Bucer. They were matched by Romanists of equal reputation, including Johann Eck, who had been one of Luther's earliest antagonists and who, a few years after Luther, also translated the Bible into German.

Remarkably, under Contarini's prodding the assembled theologians came to an agreement on the nature of justification by faith. Although Luther and Pope Paul III repudiated the agreement as filled with too much ambiguity, others like John Calvin and the participants considered it a hopeful step towards reconciliation. It affirmed that God's grace was the foundation of justification (the Protestant insistence), but also that true faith would always show itself active in love (the Catholic insistence).

When, however, Regensburg turned to questions of authority, the meeting fell apart. Contarini was a genuine reformer who took Protestant criticisms of Rome seriously (he had, after all, made many of their criticisms himself), and who was willing to move on justification. But he was also a firm Catholic who would not budge on the authority of the pope, the indispensability of the church's magisterium as the final interpreter of Scripture, and the independence of the church from domination by political rulers. This last reservation was crucial, since, with the exception of sectarian movements like the Anabaptism of Menno Simons, enduring Protestant movements advanced only where city councils or local monarchs assumed control of church as well as state.

Eire's Reformations is Contarini-esque most obviously in its favorable account of those Catholics who, before and after 1517, agreed with Protestants that church reform was necessary, but who also believed that breaking with centralized church authority would cause irreparable harm. Eire's treatment of a vast roster of actors is unusually even-handed—with the possible exception of John Knox, where the connotations of "zealous" and an "incendiary" and "misogynist" who specialized in promoting "rioting" seem to point in only one direction. In a different register, Eire obviously respects the utter sincerity of Martin Luther's passionate search for a gracious God. He also conveys perfectly the reasons for Luther's central place in the era's history: "the very reason that he had risen to prominence so quickly was that he embodied something much larger than himself and articulated most eloquently the disappointments and aspirations of so many others." About Zwingli, Calvin, and other leading Protestants the book is measured, empathetic, and informative.

But the tone does shift for at least some Catholic reformers. Of these, Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros comes across as the most attractive figure in the book. This Franciscan friar who became archbishop of Toledo convened synods of Spanish bishops in the 1490s in order to promote better preaching and more faithful general exercise of their duties. He cleansed Spain's monasteries by dismissing hundreds of indolent or immoral monks. He sponsored the printing of devotional works for lay Catholics, many of them in the Castilian vernacular. He founded the University of Alcalá in order to train a dedicated and learned clergy. Most notably, in a great effort that seemed to have "proto-Protestant" written all over it, he sponsored the Complutesian Polyglot, a critical edition of the Bible in Hebrew, Greek, Arabic, and Latin that productively exploited the Renaissance's appeal for returning ad fontes (to original sources). In more explicitly Christian terms, Jiménez de Cisneros prepared the edition with the hope, as he wrote in its preface, that "every student of Holy Scripture might … be able to quench his thirst at the very fountainhead of the water that flows unto life everlasting." The Polyglot was printed in 1514, two years before Erasmus' Greek text of the New Testament enthralled Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli with momentous results. But publication was held up until 1520, or three years after Jiménez de Cisneros had died.

Eire's chapter on the Jesuits as the most effective agents of Catholic reform likewise hints at the book's general stance. The flurry of new or renewed Catholic religious orders that, in effect, answered the Protestant challenge, revealed, according to Eire, "the peculiar genius of Catholicism to reinvent the monastic calling in this time of crisis and its ability to mold it in so many different ways to fit particular needs." For their discipline in following the piety of founder Ignatius Loyola's Spiritual Exercises, their success as educators throughout much of Europe, and their far-flung missionary ventures well beyond the confines of Europe, Eire suggests that this one order "commands a special place … as unique and arguably the most extraordinary, innovative, and influential of all the new clergy."

Like Gasparo Contarini, in other words, Eire understands clearly, and even approves, Protestant efforts to reform corrupt church practices and clarify theology that had been neglected or perverted. Yet also in Contarini fashion, his narrative highlights the Catholic reforming movements that were gaining momentum before Luther and Calvin appeared and that increased in strength during the decades of theological conflict. While Eire notes excesses in later efforts, particularly in exaggerated responses to perceived Protestant errors, the book intimates that of the several Reformations in early modern Europe, Catholic reform did the most good and with the least damage from friendly fire to supporters and to Europe as a whole.

Many other features of Reformations deserve at least brief mention. By treating as a unit the two centuries from Gutenberg's invention of the printing press in the 1450s to the Treaty of Westphalia that in 1648 ended the horrific bloodshed of the Thirty Years' War, Eire can demonstrate the irreducibly religious character of the era, but also that influences flowed constantly from other spheres of life to religion as well as in the other direction. The book intelligently modifies George Huntston Williams' properly respected treatment of "the radical Reformation" by suggesting a new term, "alternative," for the extremely diverse cluster of reformers who agreed with Menno Simons and other Anabaptists in rejecting the authority of Protestant regimes as well as Catholic. The book's succinct account of how earnest polemics drove apart the day-to-day Christianity of Protestants and Catholics summarizes themes that Eire has addressed in earlier writing: where Protestant "desacralization" distinguished ever more sharply between matter and spirit, nature and the supernatural, the living and the dead, Catholic spirituality would intermix these spheres with abandon into the 19th century and even beyond. Eire also makes the arresting observation that in that intensely polemical era, musical borrowings among confessions and a common Protestant-Catholic concentration on the activity of Satan remained just about the only ecumenical spheres. As just one more among many valuable insights, an awareness that "the pope figured much more prominently in early Protestant piety—as the sum of all evil—than he did in Catholic piety" effectively summarizes several centuries of Protestant complaint against post-Reformation Catholicism.

The writing, exceptionally clear throughout, occasionally becomes lapidary, as when Eire plays off the well-known aphorism that "Erasmus laid the egg that Luther hatched." After noting Luther's tolerance for a great deal of Catholic iconography and Zwingli's dedication to reforms in lifestyle, ecclesiastical discipline, and church display for which Erasmus had campaigned, he concludes that "Zwingli truly hatched Erasmus's reforming egg; Luther would merely scramble."

But what about criticisms? Some historians will not agree that, after Europe divided religiously, trust in science became the chief replacement for trust in God. The book itself documents the orthodox theology of main promoters of the scientific revolution like Johannes Kepler and Robert Boyle. Eire's handling of Galileo's censure by Rome also plays down the contribution of Italian political in-fighting to what mistakenly can seem a simple conflict between religion and science. Better to go with the conclusion of Brad Gregory's Unintended Reformation that the eventual hegemony of scientific learning came only after the destabilization of authority that occurred when Protestants exalted the individual conscience—and Catholics responded by harshly regulating free inquiry.

Some Protestants, including this one, will ask whether Eire has adequately captured the essence of Protestant spiritualty. After accurately describing the insistence of Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and other Protestants on predestination and justification by faith alone through grace alone, Eire concludes that Protestant piety "focused on an omnipresent, omniscient male deity who needed no intermediaries and favored no location in particular over another." Yes, in part. But as the book's own inclusion of Lucas Cranach's 1555 Weimar altarpiece illustrates, with blood from Christ on the cross pouring onto a Bible held open by Martin Luther, the main replacement in Protestant piety for Catholic saints, Mary, pilgrimages, and the like was an active Christology.

Protestant life, in admitted tension with some aspects of Protestant theology, throve on hymnody, like Luther's "were not the right Man on our side … . You ask who that may be? Christ Jesus it is he." Theocentric speculation regularly took flesh in Christ-centered exposition, as when Calvin discoursed so memorably in The Institutes of the Christian Religion on Christ as prophet, priest, and king. An ever-present Christ, and not a distant deity, inspired Anabaptists as an example to follow even through the fire. The same emphasis long endured as the heart of Protestant popular piety, as in the Heidelberg's Catechism assurance that "my only comfort, in life and death [is] that I belong … not to myself, but to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ." Protestants may have reduced the number of spiritual intermediaries, but the One who remained was far from cold, remote, or simply controlling.

The kind of objections this book will stimulate testifies to its success as much as the insights that almost everyone can applaud. Those insights make up an unusually fresh historical account of "early modern Europe." Yet appearing as the book does, when Catholics and Protestants now listen to one another as they did not from 1541 and the Council of Regensburg until the 1960s and after the Second Vatican Council, Eire's book may also function for contemporary Catholics and Protestants as Gasparo Contarini's invitations to Regensburg served in his own day, though hopefully this time as an opportunity for mutual edification that is not recessed for more than 400 years.

Mark Noll's most recent book is In the Beginning Was the Word: The Bible in American Public Life, 1492-1783 (Oxford Univ. Press).

A follow-up to "Waiting for Snow in Havana", this book begins with Eire's arrival in Miami, At eleven years old, he is totally unprepared for the world in which he lands. Privileged, educated, raised to be polite, Carlos find life in a foster home, a group home, and eventually in the home of a distant uncle challenging at every level. One to love books, Carlos' approach to adjustment is very different than Tony's, his brother whose first impulse is to fight. In order to become American, Carlos becomes Charles, then Charlie, and finally Chuck. Cuba becomes farther away, but the values one learns as a young child can never be fully thrown aside.

Language, school, customs, and friendships are all a challenge as Eire goes from a loving Jewish foster home to a cold, overcrowded group home filled with young Cuban boys of far different backgrounds. Eventually, he comes to the home of his uncle in Bloomington, Illinois and after years, his mother is able to join them, but they are far different than the young boys she sent away.

Eire jumps from childhood to events in his adult life which were so influenced by those childhood experiences. Tony's life takes a much different route as he descends into alcoholism and violence. Hard work, incredible adjustment, and an unfailing sense of faith in something better sustain Carlos in this journey. At times, funny, and at other times very sad, this book is a view inside the mind of a young immigrant. Great writing and plenty of food for thought.

Carlos Eire was one of 14,000 children airlifted out of Cuba without their parents during "Operation Peter Pan" between 1960 and 1962. This funny, poignant, sad, insightful, and informative memoir won the National Book Award in 2003 and rightfully so. Carlos was 11 when he and his brother Tony, who was 13, landed in Miami believing that their parents were soon to follow. In the hour flight from Havana, Carlos went from being a privileged fair skinned Cuban boy to being a "spic."

The majority of this book is set in Havana where Carlos enjoys a care-free and privileged life with a thick layer of Catholicism and extended family. His father is a eccentric art-collecting judge, his mother a woman with a crippled leg due to polio and dedicated to her children. The antics of Carlos and his brother, Tony, are often hilarious but life is changing as Fidel Castro ousts President Batista on January 1 1959. Suddenly, there is gunfire in the streets, Christmas is made illegal, relatives are imprisoned, and parents are scrambling for ways to protect their children by sending them to the United States.

Eire is an absolutely beautiful writer. Filled with humor, philosophy, and a sprinkling of theology, "Waiting for snow in Havana" provides the reader with a chance to walk in the shoes of a young immigrant who was thrown into a strange new world. Eire is currently a professor of theology at Yale.

"The past is a nice place to visit, but not a place to live" is something I've been told. Carlos Eire's writings beg the opposite. He offers a glimpse at paradise lost too soon and briefly of a living hell on earth. It is related in just the way a child would tell a story: somewhat easily distracted by other thoughts but seamlessly returning to the original topic as though it were all related embellishing when fantasy is logical. I thoroughly enjoyed the writing style. The story combines horror, bravery, adventure, pure happiness and pure sadness.

The Short of It:

A young boy’s take on Cuba before and after Fidel Castro.

The Rest of It:

Waiting for Snow in Havana is both an exorcism and an ode to a paradise lost. For the Cuba of Carlos’s youth—with its lizards and turquoise seas and sun-drenched siestas—becomes an island of condemnation once a cigar-smoking guerrilla named Fidel Castro ousts President Batista on January 1, 1959. Suddenly the music in the streets sounds like gunfire. Christmas is made illegal, political dissent leads to imprisonment, and too many of Carlos’s friends are leaving Cuba for a place as far away and unthinkable as the United States. Carlos will end up there, too, and fulfill his mother’s dreams by becoming a modern American man—even if his soul remains in the country he left behind. –Simon & Schuster

I was pleasantly surprised by this book. Given the subject matter, I expected it to be more factual but Eire chose to focus on his idyllic childhood. His childhood is fantastical in nature as Carlos was a very imaginative child. His mother, referred to as Marie Antoinette and his father Louis XVI, are rather mysterious figures. They are well-off but the father is preoccupied with his material wealth, more so than his family’s well-being. So when the family is torn apart, it seems that the burden of responsibility falls on Carlos himself.

Written years later, Eire’s book is full of charm and wit but it’s apparent while reading just how painful his story is to tell. In fact, he’s often said that he wanted this to be a work of fiction, not a memoir and I must tell you, it does read like fiction so for those of you who shy away from memoirs, this might be a good one for you to grab.

My book club read this and we discussed it a couple of weeks ago. I think we were all in agreement that the writing was lovely, but many felt nothing for Carlos. He was wealthy and spoiled and this prevented many from being able to relate to his story but I don’t know, there is something horrifying about living in a dream world and then being thrown into reality at such a young age. It’s almost more tragic.

Overall, a good discussion book, lovely writing and you’ll learn a little about pre-war Cuba.

Waiting for Snow in Havana won the National Book Award in 2003.

For more reviews, visit my blog: Book Chatter.

My husband and I bought this for my father-in-law, who is Cuban and roughly the same age as the author. He loved it. He kept telling us, "Yes, this is exactly what I remember!" I read it out of curiosity, just to try to get a little insight into this mostly Cuban family I married into. I enjoyed it. There were some very dark spots, and there were a lot of hilarious incidents, but the whole thing really shone with the author's love for his country and his sense of loss at the way his beloved country has turned out. He has settled into American life, and he sounds happy, but he left some of his heart in Cuba. I sort of see that in my father-in-law. I would recommend this to anyone, but especially to anyone who wants to gain some insight in Cuban culture and even a little bit of Cuban politics.

Eire's experiences and the writing that eludicates them into vibrancy gained this memoir five stars. The sentences flow from prose to poetic, and he describes the surroundings so well, without dragging the pace down. I didn't know a lot about Cuba during the time of Castro coming into power, but now I understand why Cuban exiles in the UNited States feel so strongly. Definite recommendation.

Cuba...land of tangerine sunsets and turquoise waves...steamy heat and voodoo curses. I loved reading the memoir of a judge's son who is close to my age but who grew up in very different circumstances. Carlos's first 11 years were the carefree days of a child of means. Days of family gatherings, bike riding, swimming, movies, and tormenting the ubiquitous lizards -- minus half a star for that! The revolution is hinted at from time to time, and like a bruise one can't help touching to see if it still hurts, Carlos returns over and over to those tumultuous times that shaped his years of childhood until he was "expelled from paradise."

14,000 children left Cuba without their parents in the early 1960s because they didn't need the visas that took up to a year to obtain. The idea was that the parents would soon follow them to a reunion in the U.S. These youngsters left their country and families carrying only two sets of clothes, a hat, and a book..."the only hint of mercy." It was an abrupt transition from life in Cuba to the U.S. Almost four years in orphanages and foster homes passed until Carlos and his brother Tony were able to join their mother in Chicago:

..."As the train began to roll past the steel mills and oil refineries on the South Side of Chicago, it seemed we had passed through the gates of hell. We saw acres and acres of smokestacks shooting out flames, huge twisting labyrinths of pipes, mazes of twisting stairs, giant spheres, and colossal storage tanks. But it was the flames that make me reel. Big, noisy flames. Balls of flame. Jets. Plumes. Flares. Soft, dancing flames that swayed in the wind and made the chimneys look like giant candles at Satan's dinner table. Fountains of fire. Satan's Versailles." (195)

Carlos writes with pathos and passion about his memories of his homeland - a country that is part of him but still a place he will not visit while it is under the oppressive Castro regime. I guess in his case it's true that you can't go home again.

Biographical essays illustrating the privileged life of the wealthy in pre-Castro Havana by an American immigrant who is now a religious studies professor at Yale. The essays are linked by the sense of anarchy in a (typical?) boy's life: destroying things, acting aggressively towards friends and family. I couldn't relate to this. There are number of insights which struck me: a chance comment by Carlos' nanny gives him the misconception that he will turn black if he eats dark colored foods, when in fact the flight from Havana to Florida (at age 11) was much more effective in that transformation. Lots of religious beliefs portending his future career? Very well written with interesting material.½

Subtitled “Confessions of a Cuban Boy,” this memoir first caught my eye because of the great title, then because it was written by one of the boys separated from his family during the early reign of Fidel Castro, during the Operation Pedro Pan exodus, an attempt to save children of those deemed against the Revolution, those most in danger.

The book almost lost me when the author along with other little boys, cruel as children often can be, started torturing lizards, symbolic of much to come. I expected a typical memoir but that is certainly not what I got. The writing is not linear, the author speaks to us readers directly, and frequently gives hints of what is to come, promises to tell us more later. The style is quirky and was a bit disconcerting to me until I gave myself over to the author's story.

The child, Carlos, most often refers to his father as Louis XVI, as his father claimed to be in a former life, and his mother as Marie Antoinette, although she did not claim to be a reincarnation. His father was a judge and an attorney, one of the privileged ones under Batista. Childhood in Havana is painted in pictures vibrant and astounding, family and friends all coming to life. Very little of the book deals with Carlos or his family after Carlos was separated from his brother, the only person he knew in the United States, as soon as they landed.

Some examples of the author's style of prose:

“Crotons of all kinds. Giant philodendrons. Caladiums. Flowers. Palms in all shapes and sizes. Especially royal palms, so tall, so regal. So Cuban. Palms that pierce my heart and entrails to this very day.”

“I was one of the lucky ones. Fidel couldn't obliterate me as he did all the other children, slicing off their heads over so slowly, and replacing them with fearful, slavish copies of his own. New heads held in place by two bolts, like Boris Karloff's in Frankenstein, one bolt forged from fear, the other from illusion.”

“If Adam and Eve hadn't screwed up so badly, and their children had been able to play in the Garden of Eden, they would have laughed just like we did that day, when we threw rocks at one another on the edge of the turquoise sea.”

“To understand Fidel you have to be out of your mind. To live with the memories, too, it helps to have lucid moments that others mistake for delusions.”

This lyrical memoir is written with a strange mix of philosophy, religion, symbolism, and an adult's remembrance of his childhood: family, Havana, and the politics of the day. It is serious, touching, beautiful, funny, and entertaining. I loved it.

I didn't actually finish this but I still really enjoyed what I read. Written by a scholar, this is the memoir of his childhood in pre-Castro Cuba. At the age of 11 his parents shipped him and his brother to America and that was the last time he saw his father. He has a very entertaining and captivating writing style. The only reason I didn't finish is because apparently I've become completely shallow lately. I need fluffy fiction. I do hope to finish this once I become an adult again :)

I didn't actually finish this but I still really enjoyed what I read. Written by a scholar, this is the memoir of his childhood in pre-Castro Cuba. At the age of 11 his parents shipped him and his brother to America and that was the last time he saw his father. He has a very entertaining and captivating writing style. The only reason I didn't finish is because apparently I've become completely shallow lately. I need fluffy fiction. I do hope to finish this once I become an adult again :)

memoirs of a privileged childhood in Cuba before being sent to the US at age 11, as Castro changed Cuba forever.
Poetically written.

The blurb on the back of my copy of this book says that it both an exorcism and an ode to a paradise lost: Mr. Eire's memories of his boyhood as a member of the Cuban upper classes, the wrenching transformation of his country after Castro's revolution and his emmigration to America as part of an airlift of 14,000 children dubbed Operation Pedro Pan.

As one who has a love of magical realism in Latin American fiction, this book is magical realism come to life as the author talks about his parents past lives as the King & Queen of France, as he sees Jesus through his dining room window and ponders the horrors of the lizards that are everywhere in Havana. Many of these images can be ascribed to memories that are hazy with time and that dwell in early childhood. Are they really memories or are they memories of what has been told in the family over and over again until they seem real? It really doesn't matter as the author's writing is so compelling that I could not put this book down.