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Highlights
- Ivonne Lamazares's distinguished debut novel is "at once a deeply personal and worldly tale . . . a wonderful amalgamation of culture, politics, and love" (Philadelphia Weekly).
- Author(s): Ivonne Lamazares
- 218 Pages
- Fiction + Literature Genres, Action & Adventure
Description
About the Book
Set in 1960s Cuba, as Castro's revolution begins, this debut novel follows a girl named Tanya, her mother, and band of other refugees who board a makeshift raft bound for Florida. When they reach shore, they find the American Dream may not be within their reach.Book Synopsis
Ivonne Lamazares's distinguished debut novel is "at once a deeply personal and worldly tale . . . a wonderful amalgamation of culture, politics, and love" (Philadelphia Weekly). With economical prose and a clear-eyed vision, Lamazares evokes lives full of hope but fraught with obstacles in this story of a mother and daughter in 1960s Cuba. The story is told in the brave, tough voice of Tanya, a girl at odds with her mother and with the rapidly changing world around her. In the wake of Castro's revolution, Tanya's mother -- passionate and unreliable -- is determined to leave Cuba at all costs and to take her reluctant daughter with her. THE SUGAR ISLAND presents their embattled relationship against the backdrop of a country in conflict with itself, where the old world chafes against the new and where a parent's desperate grab for freedom has dire consequences for her child.
Review Quotes
"Ivonne Lamazares's fresh, clear voice and lyrical vision of Cuba past and present are a welcome addition to the New American Literature that's developing fast along our borders from Miami to Los Angeles." -- Russell Banks
"Ivonne Lamazares writes of the tug of history, the wrenching of families. In an intimate voice that is distinctly her own, this novel is a kind of cross between Cristina Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban and Mona Simpson's Anywhere but Here. Writing of mothers and daughters in a world torn apart by politics, Ivonne Lamazares offers a dazzling new addition to Cuban-American literature." -- Mary Morris "Reading this magnificent first novel, I couldn't stop myself from thinking that Holden Caulfield had somehow ended up in revolutionary Cuba, transformed into a most irreverent teenage girl, brazen and stubborn and breathtakingly conTdent and keen-eyed, growing up in a society intent on breaking its own lovesick heart. THE SUGAR ISLAND is contemporary Tction at its best, prizewinning Tction, and Ivonne Lamazares is an unforgettable writer." -- Bob Shacochis ". . . spare, lyrical, and brilliantly observant . . . life in Castro's Cuba . . . comes across clearly in the hands of this talented new writer." Publishers Weekly, Starred "One of the most original renditions to date by a Cuban-American writer of the contemporary Cuba story." The Miami Herald "worth reading for its . . . courageous main character, its striking relevance to recent . . . events, and its . . . sketches of Cuban . . . life." The Seattle Times --Shipping details
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