DescriptionSelected by Cornelius Eady, these poems reflect the experience of leaving her Cuban homeland on the last of the Johnson administration’s Freedom Flights and building a new life in the United States.
Reviews “...the landscape of loss and gain we call exile, seen through the poet’s sharp eye and described in a voice that never wavers from the truth. I felt I was re-encountering Cuba in the light of new imagining, freed of ideology and therefore resplendent and complete.” --Pablo Medina
Selected by This remarkable first book begins with Castillo’s Cuban childhood, and follows her family as they "start over without a language" on one of the last Freedom Flights to Miami. The poems chronicle the visit of a Cuban uncle, who’s surrounded by relatives that "twenty years and English have turned into strangers," and Castillo’s bittersweet return to her homeland: "Even a map cannot show you the way back to a place that no longer exists."
Accolades White Pine Press Poetry Prize: 7
