January 22-28, 2004

artpicks

Ana Menéndez

by Joel Tannenbaum

books

It's not easy being Cuban nowadays. Without Soviet subsidies, the island's economy is pegged to the U.S. dollar and reliant upon an ever-increasing flood of European sex tourists. The end of Cuba's socialist experiment seems as inevitable as a Parker Posey cameo on Will and Grace. Meanwhile, Cuban Americans are experiencing a renaissance. Their collective in-law Jeb Bush is the governor of Florida, granting them the ear of Jeb's brother, the current president. And George is listening: He needs their votes to procure re-election.

A portion of this renaissance has been literary: Ana Menéndez's 2001 collection of short stories, In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd, mixes the reminiscences of expats in Miami with those of their loved ones in Havana. Menéndez has also been a voice of moderation within the Cuban-American community, encouraging people to let Elian go gracefully and stop picketing the Latin Grammys. Her first novel, Loving Che (Atlantic Monthly Press), is stylistically ambitious, telling the story in three parts of a woman who, after the death of her Cuban grandfather, journeys to Cuba to uncover the legacy of her mother's illicit affair with Che Guevara.

Much like the 1968 Tomas Gutierrez Alea film Memories of Underdevelopment, about a bourgeois holdover from the Batista era who never fled for Miami, Menéndez populates her work with Cubans who live in the past, longing for the inherited privileges the revolution has denied them. She treats them with an immense sympathy that they may not entirely deserve, but one that compels nonetheless.

Ana Menéndez, Tue., Jan. 27, 6 p.m., free, Borders Books & Music, 1 S. Broad St., 215-568-7400.