On New Year's Day 1959, as Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba, Alejandra San José was born in Havana, entering the world through the heart of revolution. Fearing the conflict and strife that bubbled up in the streets all around the new family, her parents took Ale and fled to the free shores of America. Ale grew up in Chicago amid a close community of refugees who lived with the hope that one day Castro would fall and they could return to their Cuban homes. Though Ale was intrigued by the specter of Havana that colored her life as a child, her fascination eventually faded in her teens until all that remained was her profound respect for the intricacies of the Spanish language and the beautiful work her father did as a linguist and translator. When her own job as an interpreter takes her back to Cuba, Ale is initially unmoved at the import of her return-- until she stumbles upon a surprising truth: the San Josés, ostensibly Catholics, are actually Jews. They are conversos who converted to Christianity during the Spanish Inquisition. Enlightened by a whole new vision of her past and her culture, Ale makes her way back through San José history, uncovering new fragments of truth about the relatives who struggled with their own identities so long ago. Ale is finally lured back to Cuba to make amends with the ancestral demons still lurking there--to translate her father's troubling youthful experiences into the healing language of her Cuban American heart. In beautiful, knowing prose, Achy Obejas opens up a fascinating world of exotic wordplay, rich history, and vibrant emotions. As Alejandra struggles to confront what it is to be Cuban and American, Catholic and Jewish, Obejas illuminates her journey and the tempestuous history of Cuba with intelligence and affection. Days of Awe is a lyrical and lovely novel from an author destined for literary renown.

Days of Awe

Literature & Fiction

Obejas, Achy

United States

Ballantine Books

“RICH AND SONOROUS PROSE . . . There’s plenty of reason to hope for the future of a fiction that welcomes writers with such a passionate sense of the past.” –San Jose Mercury News On New Year’s Day, 1959, Alejandra San José was born in Havana, entering the world through the heart of revolution. Fearing the turmoil brewing in Cuba, her parents took Ale and fled to the shores of North America–ending up in Chicago amid a close community of Cuban refugees. As an adult, Ale becomes an interpreter, which takes her back to her homeland for the first time. There, she makes her way back through San José history, uncovering new fragments of truth about the relatives who struggled with their own identities so long ago. For the San Josés, ostensibly Catholics, are actually Jews. They are conversos who converted to Christianity during the Spanish Inquisition. As Alejandra struggles to confront what it is to be Cuban and American, Catholic and Jewish, she translates her father’s troubling youthful experiences into the healing language of her own heart. “Lyrically written, Days of Awe reflects the way Cuban Spanish is spoken with poetic rhythm and frankness.” –Ms. “An ambitious work . . . A deft talent whose approach to sex, religion, and ethnicity is keenly provocative.” –Miami Herald “With intelligent, intense writing, Obejas approaches . . . the heady climes of Cuban American stalwarts Oscar Hijuelos and Cristina Garcia.” –Library Journal (starred review)

Days of Awe: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

Random House Publishing Group

Days of Awe (Womn's Fictions)

Thorndike Pr

A bilingual poetry collection from a Cuban-American writer-activist that explores themes of identity, sexuality, and belonging A unique and inspiriting bilingual collection of lyrical poetry written in a bold, mostly gender-free English and Spanish that address immigration, displacement, love and activism. The book is divided into 3 sections- First, poems addressing immigration and displacement; secondly, those addressing love, lost and found, and finally, verses focusing on action, on ways of addressing injustice and repairing the world. The volume will be both inspiration and support for readers living with marginalized identities and those who love and stand with them.

Boomerang / Bumerán: Poetry / Poesía (Raised Voices)

Genre Fiction

Beacon Press

A collection of short stories that deals with how gay and lesbian relationships ought to work, exploring the themes of broken relationships, safe sex, drug addiction, and AIDS

We Came All the Way from Cuba So You Could Dress Like This?: Stories

Cleis Pr

Achy Obejas writes stories about uprooted people. Some, like herself, are Latino immigrants and lesbians; others are men (gay and straight), people with AIDS, addicts, people living marginally, just surviving. As omniscient narrator to her characters' lives, Obejas generously delves into her own memories of exile and alienation to tell stories about women and men who struggle for wholeness and love.

Cleis Press

Poetry. Gay &amp; Lesbian Studies. Latino/Latina Studies. At last, the first collection of poems from the Pulitzer Prize and Lambda Literary Award winning Cuban-American author Achy Obejas! THISIS WHAT HAPPENED IN OUR OTHER LIFE charts the complexities of identity as the author explores her relationship to her lovers, her roots, her past, herself. Achy Obejas is the author of the novels Days of Awe (Ballantine) and Memory Mambo (Cleis) and the short story collection We Came All The Way From Cuba So You Could Dress Like This? (Cleis). She is also the editor and translator of HAVANA NOIR (Akashic). She received an NEA Fellowship in Poetry in 1986.

This Is What Happened in Our Other Life

Poetry

A Midsummer Night's Press

A twenty-four-year-old Cuban lesbian seeks a place for herself in her adopted American home while learning to cope with her dysfunctional family and overwhelming memories of her life in Cuba

Memory Mambo: A Novel

Finalist for the Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction!
Longlisted for the 2018 PEN Open Book Award and The Story Prize!
Included in The Rumpus's "What to Read When You've Made it More Than Halfway Through 2017"
Selected as one of Rigoberto Gonzalez's Favorite Books of 2017/Critics Pick, LA Times Jacket Copy
One of Electric Literature's Best Short Story Collections of 2017
"Questions of personal and national identity percolate through the stories in Obejas's memorable short fiction collection, most of which is set in Cuba, the author's birthplace...These 10 stories show Obejas's talent, illuminating Cuban culture and the innermost lives of her characters." --Publishers Weekly
"By turns searing and subtly magical, the stories in Obejas' vividly imagined collection are propelled by her characters' contradictory feelings about and unnerving experiences in Cuba...For all the human tumult and deftly sketched and reverberating historical and cultural contexts that Obejas incisively creates in these poignant, alarming tales, she also offers lyrical musings on the mysteries of the sea and the vulnerability of islands and the body. Obejas' plots are ambushing, her characters startling, her metaphors fresh, her humor caustic, and her compassion potent in these intricate and haunting stories of displacement, loss, stoicism, and realization." --Booklist
"Obejas's stories demonstrate an acute understanding of being caught between two places and cultures as different as America and Cuba." --Library Journal
"Achy Obejas's collection is about fictional Cuban migrants who never quite escape the land they've left." --Electric Literature
"Obejas writes with gentleness, without flashy wording or gimmicks, about people trying to figure out where they belong...The language we use and the stories we tell impact the futures we can imagine, but they are also restricted by what has come before. Obejas's Cuban characters, like most Americans, have limited access to the resources they need. One gets the sense that Obejas, like the Maldivian president, thinks it is time that the world takes these systemic problems on." --Los Angeles Review of Books
"Achy Obejas' superb story collection The Tower of Antilles deals with the conflicted relationships Cubans, exiles and Cuban Americans have with their homeland." --LA Times Jacket Copy
The Cubans in Achy Obejas's story collection are haunted by islands: the island they fled, the island they've created, the island they were taken to or forced from, the island they long for, the island they return to, and the island that can never be home again.
In "Superman," several possible story lines emerge about a 1950s Havana sex-show superstar who disappeared as soon as the revolution triumphed. "North/South" portrays a migrant family trying to cope with separation, lives on different hemispheres, and the eventual disintegration of blood ties. "The Cola of Oblivion" follows the path of a young woman who returns to Cuba, and who inadvertently uncorks a history of accommodation and betrayal among the family members who stayed behind during the revolution. In the title story, "The Tower of the Antilles," an interrogation reveals a series of fantasies about escape and a history of futility.
With language that is both generous and sensual, Obejas writes about existences beset by events beyond individual control, and poignantly captures how history and fate intrude on even the most ordinary of lives.

The Tower of the Antilles

Akashic Books Ltd

A true believer is faced with a choice between love for his family and the Cuban Revolution. "Daring, tough, and deeply compassionate, Achy Obejas's Ruins is a breathtaker. Obejas writes like an angel, which is to say: gloriously . . . one of the Cuba's most important writers." —Junot Diaz, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction "In the Havana of Ruins, scarcity can only be fought with ingenuity, and the characters work very hard at the exquisite art of getting by. The plot rests on the schemes of its weary, obsessive, dreamy hero—a character so brilliantly drawn that he can't be dismissed or forgotten. A tender and wildly accurate portrait, in a gem of a novel." —Joan Silber, author of The Size of the World "Obejas evinces a new, focused lyricism as she penetrates to the very heart of the Cuban paradox in a story as pared down and intense as its narrator's life." —Booklist (*starred review*) "Compassionate and intriguing . . . Obejas plays out [the book's] conflicts in measured, simple prose, allowing her descriptions of the mundane—houses, food, dominoes—to illuminate a setting filled with heartbreak, confusion and decay . . . At her best, Obejas controls the mixture of humor and pathos that suffuse this poor community." —Los Angeles Times "Ruins is a beautifully written novel, a moving testament to the human spirit of an unlikely hero who remains unbroken even as the world collapses around him . . . A fine literary achievement, it's Achy Obejas at her very best." —El Paso Times "[A] superb novel . . . Highly recommended." —Library Journal "[An] honest and superbly written book." —Miami Herald "With the deft and evocative detail of a poet's, Obejas's prose is as illuminating and honest as her struggling protagonist." —Publishers Weekly Usnavy has always been a true believer. When the Cuban Revolution triumphed in 1959, he was just a young man and eagerly signed on for all of its promises. But as the years have passed, the sacrifices have outweighed the glories and he's become increasingly isolated in his revolutionary zeal. His friends openly mock him, his wife dreams of owning a car totally outside their reach, and his beloved fourteen-year-old daughter haunts the coast of Havana, staring north. In the summer of 1994, a few years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the government allows Cubans to leave at will and on whatever will float. More than 100,000 flee—including Usnavy's best friend. Things seem to brighten when he stumbles across what may or may not be a priceless Tiffany lamp that reveals a lost family secret and fuels his long repressed feelings . . . But now Usnavy is faced with a choice between love for his family and the Revolution that has shaped his entire life. Achy Obejas is the author of various books, including the award-winning novel Days of Awe and the best-selling poetry chapbook This Is What Happened in Our Other Life. She is the editor of Akashic's critically acclaimed crime-fiction anthology Havana Noir, and the translator (into Spanish) for Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Currently, she is the Sor Juana Writer in Residence at DePaul University in Chicago. She was born in Havana and continues to spend extended time there.

Ruins

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Books by Obejas, Achy

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

Days of Awe

Days of Awe: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

Days of Awe (Womn's Fictions)

Boomerang / Bumerán: Poetry / Poesía (Raised Voices)

We Came All the Way from Cuba So You Could Dress Like This?: Stories

We Came All the Way from Cuba So You Could Dress Like This?: Stories

This Is What Happened in Our Other Life

Memory Mambo: A Novel

The Tower of the Antilles

Ruins