Insights and Reflections

Carlos Eire, the author, was one of some 14,000 unaccompanied children who were airlifted out of Cuba in 1962, three years after the Cuban Revolution. This is his story. I learned that he felt compelled to write this story in the Spring of 2000 while the world was witness to the fate of another Cuban boy, six-year-old Elian Gonzalez. I had assumed the story would flow like a river, from one destination to another, but instead, I am finding that it is told more like  a series of waves that undulate, crest and crash on the shore. The subtitle of the book is “Confessions of a Cuban Boy” and indeed, the ocean plays a significant role in many of his confessions. I have read about 120 pages so far, roughly one-third of the book, and I am intrigued by the waves of memories that are sometimes poignant, sometimes hilarious and sometimes sad, but don’t seem to follow a pre-determined path. 

In his acknowledgments, Eire says that he wrote the whole book in four months, writing every single night from 10 p.m to 2 or 3 a.m. while teaching, chairing a department, mowing the lawn, swimming with the kids, and doing other research and writing.  I have heard other authors talk about the lengthy revision process of writing, revising, rewriting, reorganizing, revising and so on, but Eire claims he wrote without a plan and without revising. It sounds as if this was a story that fermented somewhere in his brain for nearly forty years before it could no longer be contained. Dennis found this very interesting webcast presented at the 2004 National Bookfest.   It is quite long (35 minutes) but well worth watching if you would like to meet Carlos Eire. 

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