by Achy Obejas
First published 2017
In 1950s Havana, a sex-show performer known as Superman vanishes when Castro's revolution succeeds. His story becomes one of many possible narratives that emerge from Cuba's upheaval. Across ten interconnected tales, Cuban migrants wrestle with their relationships to an island that exists simultaneously as memory, homeland, and lost paradise. A family splits between hemispheres in "North/South," watching blood ties dissolve under the weight of distance and different dreams. Characters find themselves suspended between the Cuba they left behind and the America they struggle to claim. Each story reveals people caught in the space between cultures, carrying the weight of a homeland that shifts meaning with each passing year. Some long to return, others flee again, and many discover that the island in their hearts bears little resemblance to any place that exists on maps. Obejas writes with understated precision about displacement and belonging, capturing how migration reshapes not just geography but identity itself. These Cubans live with multiple versions of home, none of them complete, all of them real.
Genres: short-stories, literary-fiction, american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, 21st-century
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: America, Cuba, Havana
Period: 1950s
153 pages · Kindle Edition · Akashic Books