Next Year in Cuba: A Cubano's Coming-Of-Age in America Paperback – January 1, 2006

I'm from Brazil and the product arrived in an excellent condition and quickly here. I enjoyed the quality and the efficience of service. I hope to buy on the Amazon again soon. If you like of an interesting life story and want to learn more about a different culture and a "new type" of culture "in the middle" of two countries, I invite you to know the Firmat's job. It's amazing! I had read the Spanish version and I was very curious to read the English version too to discover probable different points of the literary writting between two languages. Thanks to my purchase on the Amazon, now I can.

I absolutely love this book! It tells the story of my grandparents exactly how I’ve heard it growing up. This is wonderful especially when teaching my kids about our family history.

My husband grew up with author in Cuba and in Miami. It was very heart felt and an accurate story of the children that were torn from their homeland. My husband andGustavo played football for LaSalle high school and he was mentioned in the book. ZIGGY says HI.

I found this book among my mother's things when she died recently. Her parents were Spanish (father) and French (mother), and they moved quite a bit throughout her life growing up. She always felt she didn't belong anywhere, even though she came to the States in her early 20s and remained here for the rest of her life. This book beautifully describes the feelings she often expressed to me about being apart from, and not a part of, US culture. She definitely most strongly identified as French. In her eyes, the French were simply right about most things. In that sense, she was like the Cubans living in exile and their succeeding generations. And she passed an affinity for French culture to me. This book explained some of her motivations and the tristesse surrounding her opinions.There's more to the book than that as well: father and brother relationships, teaching college students, children and divorce, family dynamics.I've always had some inexplicable attachment to Cuba, so beautiful and tragic. Both joyful and dark. I loved reading about everyday life among Cuban families, including Cuban Miami. Relevant to this book is the wonderful, moving, haunting movie called Honey for Ocean/Miel para Oshün. If you can find it.Beautifully written--insightful, detailed, poetic, warm.

I didn't care for his style of writing, and I didn't care for the book.

Gustavo Perez-Firmat's memoir is a heartfelt read.For anyone who has straddled the hyphenated word Cuban-American and thought themselves as a CBA (Cuban-born Americans) or ABC(American-bred Cubans), this book is a secret treaure.Perez-Firmat takes the reader on a cultural literary journey as he tries to come to terms with exactly what and where home is. Is it the place you were born (Cuba), the place you were exiled to, (Miami) or the city that you find yourself most at peace with (Chapel Hill, North Carolina) Perez-Firmat offers a tender philosophical introspective read on all the above.The book took me to the corner merchants and restaurants of la saguesera to the academia of Chapel Hill, where Perez-Firmat later settled in as he pursued a master's in literature. Or as he puts it, "Living with an American spouse, dealing with American stepchildren, and speaking English at home, I am much more aware of my nationality that I ever was before." (p.171)His memories of his family dynamics (two grandmothers sharing a two-bedroom with him, his brother and their parents) will be relatable to anyone with a large Hispanic family or to fans of PBS 70s show "Que Pasa USA?"But his take on his "romance with teaching" really resonated with me.I enjoyed reading the often humorous tales of this professor in the classrom as he teaches college students about Spanish literature. In one scene, Perez-Firmat goes on to describe his philosophy for teaching, which can serve as a lesson to many aspiring teachers."I'm a successful teacher to the extent that I can get my students to fall for me...In a deep sense, I am the material...Like other love affairs, teaching has its own pace and moods, its good and bad days, its coded language, its rewarding or bitter conclusion. Sometimes you walk into a class and it's love at first sight."

I also emigrated to the US in 1960. I was twenty years old and recently married to my present wife of fifty years.Our children and grandchildren are all American citizens from birth and even though they have listened to our conversations about Cuba since they were toddlers, my wife and I are the only ones whose nostalgia of our former country has remained intact. In fact, it intensifies almost on a daily basis the older we get.Perez Firmat is right on target characterizing our generation and did it with class and a tad of gentle humor. I absolutely recommend this book as a great read.Signed:Andrew J. RodriguezAward-winning author: "Adios, Havana," a Memoir