It was as if we’d reached the minimum critical point of a mathematical curve. Imagine a parabola. Zero point down, at the bottom of an abyss. That’s how low we sank.
The year is 1993. Cuba is at the height of the Special Period, a widespread economic crisis following the collapse of the Soviet bloc.
For Julia, a mathematics lecturer who hates teaching, Havana is at Year Zero: the lowest possible point, going nowhere. Desperate to seize control of her life, Julia teams up with her colleague and former lover, Euclid, to seek out a document that proves the telephone was invented... continue
Lying face down on the muddy jungle floor, with the taste of his own blood in his mouth, all Malcolm Leal could do was call upon the God of his great-grandmother. Florencia Martinez Hernandez raised Malcolm as her own son in a small fishing village on the northern coast of Cuba. Teaching Malcolm wisdom gleaned from the worn pages of her century-old Bible, Florencia spoke of a temple "promised to all people" and that there were men on earth who "walked with God." Most importantly, she taught him to rely on "her" God for everything. While on assignment for the Cuban Special Forces in the dense r... continue
A survivor of the Cuban Revolution recounts his pre-war childhood as the religiously devout son of a judge, and describes the conflict's violent and irrevocable impact on his friends, family, and native home.
During the Haitian Revolution of 1791-1804, arguably the most radical revolution of the modern world, slaves and former slaves succeeded in ending slavery and establishing an independent state. Yet on the Spanish island of Cuba barely fifty miles distant, the events in Haiti helped usher in the antithesis of revolutionary emancipation. When Cuban planters and authorities saw the devastation of the neighboring colony, they rushed to fill the void left in the world market for sugar, to buttress the institutions of slavery and colonial rule, and to prevent "another Haiti" from happening in their ... continue