I Was Never the First Lady: A Novel

Product Description 
“I Was Never The First Lady stitches together threads of island and identity until they became one and the same…Guerra’s own unpredictable book is haunting, complicated, [and] linguistically beautiful.” -- The New York Times 
A lush, sensuous, and original tale of family, love, and history, set against the backdrop of the Cuban Revolution and its aftermath. 
Nadia Guerra’s mother, Albis Torres, left when Nadia was just ten years old. Growing up, the proponents of revolution promised a better future. Now that she’s an adult, Nadia finds that life in Havana hasn’t quite matched its promise; instead it has stifled her rebellious and artistic desires. Each night she DJs a radio show government censors block from broadcasting. Frustrated, Nadia finds hope and a way out when she wins a scholarship to study in Russia. 
Leaving Cuba offers her the chance to find her long lost mother and her real father. But as she embarks on a journey east, Nadia soon begins to question everything she thought she knew and understood about her past. 
As Nadia discovers more about her family, her fate becomes entwined with that of Celia Sanchez, an icon of the Cuban Revolution—a resistance fighter, ingenious spy, and the rumored lover of Fidel Castro. A tale of revolutionary ideals and promise, Celia’s story interweaves with Nadia’s search for meaning, and eventually reveals secrets Nadia could never have dreamed. 
Translated from the Spanish by Achy Obejas 
 Review 
“ 
I Was Never The First Lady stitches together threads of island and identity until they became one and the same…Guerra’s own unpredictable book is haunting, complicated, [and] linguistically beautiful.” -- 
New York Times\n“…A revelatory tale of the Cuban Revolution’s impact on a family. […] Guerra holds the reader’s attention by evoking Cuba’s political tempest in Havana’s humid, salty air. It adds up to an effectively moody, intimate story.” -- 
Publishers Weekly\n"A multilayered novel...Nadia's, her mother's, and Celia's stories provide fascinating insights into the female dimension of an infamously macho revolution." 
 -- 
Booklist\n"This is Wendy Guerra at her best. 
I Was Never The First Lady is a beautiful, disturbing, intimately-told novel about the existential orphanhood of women in a Cuba where Fidel’s Castro’s revolution has upended notions of family, individual identity and national belonging. Unforgettable." -- Jon Lee Anderson, author of CHE GUEVARA: A REVOLUTIONARY LIFE\n"Guerra’s novel is a grand if bittersweet valentine to Cuba." -- 
Kirkus Reviews\n"[Guerra is] a staggering talent." -- Oprah.com 
 About the Author 
Wendy Guerra is a Cuban poet and novelist who has contributed to different magazines and newspapers, including the Spanish daily El Mundo and the Miami Herald, where she currently writes about arts and literature. Her first collection of poetry, Platea a oscuras, earned her a prize from the University of Havana when she was just seventeen, and she won the Bruguera Prize. Although her novels have been translated into several languages, only one of them has been published in Cuba. She has always lived in Havana.

Literature & Fiction

Guerra, Wendy

United States

HarperVia

Poetry. Latino/Latina Studies. Translated from the Spanish by Elizabeth Polli. A CAGE WITHIN is the first U.S. publication of poems by well known Cuban writer Wendy Guerra. "Wendy Guerra's is a voice from the darkness, a siren call beckoning us toward the light. What's revealed is the self as an island.... There's beauty here, and pain, ad a great longing for what might have been, and hope, always hope."—Achy Obejas

A Cage Within

Poetry

Harbor Mountain Press

When Nieve Guerra finds herself caught between the tides of her parents’ turbulent relationship and a country torn apart by political unrest, she begins recording the intimate and harsh details of her life within the pages of her Diary. Nieve is sent away from her mother, her mother’s free-spirited and loving Swedish boyfriend Fausto, and her childhood city of Cienfuegos and forced to endure unrelenting abuse at the hand of her father. Only her Diary will not leave her. It is her only friend, her sole outlet for her joy, sadness, and anger, and because of it she is able to remain in Cuba, her only home.

Everyone Leaves

Genre Fiction

BRILLIANCE AUDIO ^

When Nieve Guerra finds herself caught between the tides of her parents' turbulent relationship and a country torn apart by political unrest, she begins recording the intimate and harsh details of her life within the pages of her Diary. Nieve is sent away from her mother, her mother's free-spirited and loving Swedish boyfriend Fausto, and her childhood city of Cienfuegos and forced to endure unrelenting abuse at the hand of her father. Only her Diary will not leave her. It is her only friend, her sole outlet for her joy, sadness, and anger, and because of it she is able to remain in Cuba, her only home.

Nieve Guerra finds herself caught between the tides of her parents’ rocky relationship and a country in the midst of a revolution. Recording her daily thoughts and accounts of living with her abusive father, an alcoholic theater actor, Nieve uses her diary to express herself. From being sent away from her mother, her mother’s free-spirited and loving boyfriend, and her childhood city of Cienfuegos to being forced to call herself a Cuban “revolutionary Pioneer,” Nieve records in honest detail a life in which she loses those she loves the most--and can do nothing about it. Through her diary entries, Nieve reveals the intimate details of a turbulent family life while painting an authentic portrait of the social and political unrest in Cuba under the rule of Castro.

AmazonCrossing

14 "BEST OF DECEMBER 2018" Lists Including Entertainment Weekly, BBC.com, New York Magazine / Vulture, Bustle, The Millions, Crimereads / LitHub, Book Riot, Asymptote Journal, Vol. 1 Brooklyn , Bust, Pop Sugar and Words Without Borders A novel of glamour, surveillance, and corruption in contemporary Cuba, from an internationally bestselling author--who has never before been translated into English Cleo, scion of a once-prominent Cuban family and a promising young writer in her own right, travels to Spain to collect a prestigious award. There, Cuban expats view her with suspicion--assuming she's an informant for the Castro regime. To Cleo's surprise, that suspicion follows her home to Cuba, where she finds herself under constant surveillance by the government. When she meets and falls in love with a Hollywood filmmaker, she discovers her family is not who she thought they were . . . and neither is the filmmaker.

Revolution Sunday

Melville House

Poems from a critically acclaimed Cuban writer available in English for the first time. &nbsp; Imbued with a sensuality reminiscent of the work of Anaïs Nin, Wendy Guerra's Delicates takes readers on an exhilarating journey through the cities of love, where women leave their bodies "in the showers of men," marking their territory "like animals in heat," their panties "saturated with sand and a sidereal isolating odor." Guerra's shocking metaphors and images invite us to enter her gallery of striking and provoking poems where we witness a flight through the air from a thirty-fourth-story window and a woman's pilgrimage to the salt flats "to taste the pink in stones" on her lover's behalf. Guerra's relationship with her native Cuba--much like her relationships with men--is complex and multilayered. Her work confronts the realities of a political system that doesn't celebrate artistic freedom. Here we have a new way of looking at a woman, an artist, a country, and the colonizers of that country. In these music-infused poems, Guerra shares with us her hard-won truths. &nbsp;

Delicates

Seagull Books

Negra: Traduit de l'espagnol (Cuba) par Marianne Millon

Literary

Stock

«Un hermoso homenaje a Anaïs Nin que convierte a Wendy Guerra en su heredera contemporánea.» Camille Tenneson, Nouvel Observateur Es 1922. Anaïs Nin viaja a Cuba tras el rastro de un padre ausente e idealizado, en busca de su familia. Tiene 19 años y se ha comprometido con Hugo Guiler, un rico banquero cuyos padres se oponen a que su hijo se case con una latina católica y morena. Él está en Europa meditando sobre la decisión que habrá de tomar. Ella, de vuelta en la entrañable ciudad de sus padres tras haber vivido en Estados Unidos, escribe el diario por el que será conocida. A partir de las alusiones en éste a aquel periodo, Wendy Guerra imagina lo que Anaïs pudo sentir al llegar a la isla, sus dudas sobre la conveniencia de casarse, sus deseos de ser escritora y vivir en París y su determinación de ser una mujer libre, guiada sólo por la cadencia de su deseo. «Proyecté un apócrifo de sus líneas vacías a partir de un diario casi virgen que reescribo hoy de memoria, con los ojos cerrados y puño firme. Poseída por sus testimonios. Vivimos épocas distintas, pero acabamos encontrándonos en La Habana.» ENGLISH DESCRIPTION In 1922 Anaïs Nin travels to Cuba. The 19-year old is engaged to be married to a rich banker, a union his parents are opposed to. Although only nine entries were actually written in Cuba, after her sojourn in her parents' beloved city Anaïs writes the diary that will make her famous. Using references from this period, Wendy Guerra imagines what Anaïs may have felt on arriving to Cuba. Her misgivings on the idea of marriage, her dreams of becoming a writer living in Paris, and her resolve to live guided only by the cadence of her desire.

Posar desnuda en La Habana (Spanish Edition)

Alfaguara

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Books by Guerra, Wendy

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Guerra, Wendy. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

I Was Never the First Lady: A Novel

I Was Never the First Lady: A Novel

A Cage Within

Everyone Leaves

Everyone Leaves

Everyone Leaves

Revolution Sunday

Delicates

Negra: Traduit de l'espagnol (Cuba) par Marianne Millon

Posar desnuda en La Habana (Spanish Edition)