The Portable Island

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvi

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2. Introduction in Two Voices

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

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   2. After the Bridges

      • Ruth Behar

      Pages 3-8

   3. Our Memories, Ourselves

      • Lucía M. Suárez

      Pages 9-16

3. En La Maleta: With a Suitcase in Our Hands

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 17-18

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   2. Wherever That May Be

      • Richard Blanco

      Pages 19-24

   3. I Will Die in Paris in the Sudden Rain

      • Verónica Pérez Konina

      Pages 25-36

   4. Exile and Bougainvillea

      • José Kozer

      Pages 37-41

   5. The Land Is in Me

      • Damaris Calderón

      Pages 43-45

   6. Notes on the Movement of Trains in Germany

      • Carlos Aguilera Chang

      Pages 47-53

   7. Easter Sunday and Lake Waban: Two Poems

      • Nancy Morejón

      Pages 55-58

   8. Avon Calling

      • Nely Galán

      Pages 59-63

4. Idas: After Everyone Has Left

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 65-66

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   2. They Took Me to the Movies While My Mother Packed Her Bag and Other Poems

      • Rolando Estévez

      Pages 67-78

   3. Other Roads to Santiago and Other Poems

      • Laura Ruiz Montes

      Pages 79-84

   4. “That’s My Theme: The Human Adventure.” An Interview with Ena Lucía Portela

      • Iraida H. López

      Pages 85-91

   5. From Havana to Mexico City: Generation, Diaspora, and Borderland

      • Rafael Rojas

      Pages 93-104

   6. Josefina the Traveler: Ceremony for a Desperate Actress (Monologue)

      • Abilio Estévez

      Pages 105-110

   7. Letter to Enrique Saínz, or, On Imaginary Conversions

      • Jorge Luis Arcos

      Pages 111-118

5. Regresos: When We Return

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 119-120

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Cubans today are at home in diasporas that stretch from Miami to Mexico City to Moscow. Back on the island, watching as fellow Cubans leave, the impact of departure upon departure can be wrenching. How do Cubans confront their condition as an uprooted people? The Portable Island: Cubans at Home in the World offers a stunning chorus of responses, gathering some of the most daring Cuban writers, artists, and thinkers to address the haunting effect of globalization on their own lives.

• Germany
• identity
• interview
• sociology

"The Portable Island explores the sensibilities of exile with grace to spare, giving voice to the ambivalence with which all of us -whether exiled or not - yearn for what we've lost. The island evoked here is a place both real and mythical: as much a paradise as a hell, as much a point of origin as a destination. Beyond that, these essays and poems also bear eloquent witness to the utter failure of Cuba's so-called Revolution, which wantonly expels whomever it can't devour." - Carlos Eire, author of Waiting for Snow in Havana

"Ruth Behar and Lucia Suarez serve up a sumptuous feast of love for a lost island. The Portable Island demonstrates the indelible impact Cuba has had not just upon its children but on all who come to know it." - Alfredo Estrada, author of Havana: Autobiography of a City

"Ruth Behar and Lucía M. Suárez, in gathering these inspiring, tenacious meditations on the circuitousness of exile, show that the terms 'home' and 'diaspora' are now synonymous. They also prove that Cuba is not only an island. It has become a metaphor for universalism!" - Ilan Stavans, author of The Hispanic Condition and Spanglish

RUTH BEHAR is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan, USA.
 
LUC?A M. SUÁREZ is Associate Professor of Spanish at Amherst College, USA.

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