Dancing with Cuba: A Memoir of the Revolution

A vivid and mesmerizing memoir of the six months the author spent in Cuba in 1970, a time when she began to develop her own fervent political conscience. Alma Guillermoprieto--an award-winning journalist and arguably our most clear-eyed observer of Latin America--now turns her keen powers of observation onto her own, younger self. In this richly evocative chronicle, Guillermoprieto describes the remarkable, transforming journey she made as a twenty-year-old, when her love of dance--which had led her from her native Mexico to the New York dance studios of Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, and Twyla Tharp--took her to a job teaching poorly trained but ardent dance students in Cuba. At first unaffected by the revolutionary spirit and the adoration of Castro that pervaded the island, Guillermoprieto slowly fell under the spell of the idealism that buoyed the often destitute lives of the Cuban people. And as she opened herself to what became a complex, galvanizing revolutionary experience, she found, as well, the ideas and ideals that would shape her thinking for the rest of her life. Beautifully written and deeply felt, Dancing with Cuba is a revelatory account of the making of an impassioned political heart and mind.

Review :
"Not merely a marvelously lively and sympathetic memoir but also a resonant evocation of precisely what it's like to be young." --"O, The Oprah Magazine " "There is no clear course to the past but only a kind of dead reckoning. It is such reckoning that gives authenticity to Ms. Guillermoprieto's uneasy and fascinating account, and more than 30 years after the events, a pulsing sense of discovery." "--The New York Times ""One of the most astute and eloquent chroniclers of contemporary Latin America. . . . Guillermoprieto's description of everyday life under the revolution is intimate and poignant, and also tough-minded and shrewd." --"San Francisco Chronicle" "Dancing with Cuba is about falling in love with this mythic place or, more precisely, trying to. . . . A sympathetic yet ultimately unsparing account of a personal odyssey that ends not triumphantly but nonetheless extraordinarily." --"The Nation ""A pleasure to read, full of humanity, sly humor, curiosity and knowledge." --Katha Pollitt, "The New York Times Book Review ""Written with the deftness that has made Guillermoprieto's dispatches in "The New Yorker" some of the best writing on Latin America, Dancing with Cuba makes a significant contribution to the in-depth understanding of contemporary Cuba." -"The Miami Herald ""Few dancers write memoirs, and so the world of dance remains an elegant mystery to many of us... This is a tale, then, of artists and poets, dancers and architects -- bewildered, always in conflict, trying to keep alive standards which they knew were essential, but which were also suspect, not to say dangerous." --Doris Lessing, "The New York Observer" " ""An honest memoir filledwith the struggles most young people wrestle with: love, identity and idealism." -"USA Today " "The memoir's greatest strength is its ability to infect the reader with the feverish, hopeful and heartbreaking sense of the early days of the revolution." --"Elle ""As much a pleasure as an astonishment." - "Harper's " "Written with dignity and without rhetoric or undue emotion: when this author flays her feelings, it's because she is utterly alive with protest." -"Kirkus Reviews ""Guillermoprieto is one of the most perceptive commentators on Latin America, a writer whose political analysis is sensitive to culture and history and punctuated by telling details that illuminate larger dilemmas. This bittersweet remembrance of youthful hopes and disillusionment, of the contrast between the idealism of revolutionary aspirations and the clay feet of day-to-day revolutionaries, is set against the story of six months she spent in Cuba as a dance teacher in 1970...this marvelous book is almost impossible to put down." --"Foreign Affairs" "Gracefully told...splendidly rendered into English by Esther Allen." - "Los Angeles Times Book Review " "A vivid chronicle." --"The Boston Globe ""In exploring her own evolving relationship to art and politics...[Guillermoprieto] proposes a genuinely original take on history. To the traditional discussion of events and ideologies she adds psychology, rhetorical analysis, and, most provocatively, ideas about how one's physical body participates in the experience of cultural identity." --Sarah Kerr, "The New York Review of Books "" [A] beautifully written novelistic memoir." "San Antonio Express-News" "A compelling look back-- from the safe wisdom of middle age -- at the role a revolution played in transforming this young dancer into a journalist." --"Sacramento News & Review " "An insightful account of a time when the revolution was past its dawn but had not yet descended into cynical political bankruptcy...also a powerful memoir of a sometimes painful journey that 'thoroughly unraveled' its author's life, turning a naive young artist into a confusedly politicized adult." --"The Economist" "Excellent...Guillermoprieto writes so well." --"Newsday" "Guillermoprieto brings out the flavor of the time...insightful." --"Street Weekly" (Miami) "[Dancing with Cuba] is a loose mix of half-memories, reporting and musings on the place and meaning of art...The mix works for some of the same reasons Guillermoprieto had such difficulty in Cuba -- the sophisticated, intelligent singularity of her voice, her insistence on recognizing life's grays and her sly wit." --"Associated Press" "A bittersweet page-turner." --"Dance Teacher ""[Dancing with Cuba] is elegantly written and captures both the spirit and rhythms of Cuba during a period of dramatic change and political upheaval." --"Tucson Citizen" (Tuscon, AZ) "A vivid memoir." --"The Wall Street Journal " "In recalling and reconstructing those days, [Guillermoprieto] has given us a convincing portrait of a young woman torn between her sympathy for those in need and her desire to do nothing except her art, between her conviction that the Castroites were trying to do good and her revulsion at their rhetoric, their methods and their very selves." --"The Washington Post Book World " "From the Trade Paperback edition."