Isadora Tattlin

First person diary account of accompanying spouse, living for four years in Castro's Cuba, during the 1990s. The vignettes draw back the curtain slightly on Cuba in that time period - the very fact of living there gives the author a privileged view and understanding of Cuban society. It is of course mainly a subjective view, but criticism and admiration go hand in hand - the encounters and friendships formed with local residents are well delineated. Describing these folk, at the end of the book, the author writes that "I am going to miss them until the end of my days"… (mais)

When a government goes so far as to regulate the market economy completely out of existence, this creates strange distortions in how people obtain the necessities of life as well as how they interact with each other. Tattlin keenly observed these distortions while living in Cuba and clandestinely capitalizes on their humor value, ironies, and paradoxes. The U.S. trade embargo, begun as a means of punishing the Castro regime, comes off as a policy that has impoverished ordinary Cubans, shifted Cuba further toward hard-line economic extremism, prevented even modest logical free-market reforms, and removed any possibility of expanding U.S. influence in Cuba. Along the way readers will learn something of Cuba's history and geography. Tattlin, a pseudonym, describes herself as an American housewife, but somewhere she learned to write well too.… (mais)