For example, the narrator tastes peanut butter for the first time after the Bay of Pigs invasion due to an exchange of American food and medicine for prisoners. The Cuban revolution is especially interesting to witness through a teenager’s eyes.
This causes him to support the communists, though he reconsiders when the government nationalizes his beloved family farm. Though the narrator is light skinned, his family’s low income keeps him from belonging among Cuba’s elite class. Race and class are also recurring themes in the memoir. When he seeks guidance from adults outside of his family, the result is often sexual abuse. As the narrator reflects on his childhood and adolescence, we learn that his mother’s mental illness and his father’s abandonment forced him to explore the world socially on his own. Though Chavez hasn’t returned to Cuba in over fifty years, his love for his homeland glistens on every page.Īn intimate coming of age story, the novel’s child sex abuse theme may disturb readers. The memoir is told chronologically through a series of poetic vignettes, each only a page or two long.
Lorenzo Chavez’s fictionalized memoir, The Light of a Cuban Son, is about a boy growing up gay in mid-twentieth century Cuba. Forster’s protagonist in 'A Room with a View.' Today, I live in Virginia, USA, with his husband of over twenty-five years and a spirited Corgi Mix named Lucy Honeychurch in honor of E. Nonetheless, and like immigrants always do, I found a way to assimilate, making it to college and building a professional and personal life for myself. My own personal story is quite typical, arriving in New York City at seventeen after a two-year exile in Spain without any money, not knowing the language and lacking the skills to step into a world unlike anything that I had ever known. I have always been an observer, an explorer and a storyteller.Īs a young boy and inspired by old Hollywood movies such as 'Robin Hood' or 'Prince Valiant', I penned extraordinary tales of heroes rescuing loved ones in distress.īut most of all, I cherished writing about the summers at my maternal grandparents' farm where no one bullied me, and no man ever desired me.Īlone there, surrounded by Cuba’s beautiful countryside, away from the chaos of my Havana home, I would discover my perseverance and strength.
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