In 'Distant Marvels,' A Witness To Revolutions Tells Cuba's Story
On what life was like during the war of independence
On the ground a lot of the success of that war depended on civilians and on the people, and Maria Sirena and her parents are civilians at the end of the day. And a lot of that work was done by women, so the role that women played in revolution was interesting to me. And they set up these talleres, or workshops, where they healed the sick and they fixed weapons and they, you know, raised livestock to feed the soldiers.
On what she learned about her own family's wartime experience after writing the book
I was talking about it with my mom and my grandmother, who herself is in her 80s, and I was telling them what the novel was about and she starts talking about her grandfather who was shot and killed, you know, during the war. He was taken out of his house and shot in the woods. And I was like, 'Oh my goodness, you've never told us this story.' And then she said, 'Those damn Cubans killed him.' And my mother and I looked at each other and it was like the penny dropped, because, you know, you always imagine that your family was on the good side of history, or whatever. And she went on to talk about, 'Yeah, we could have still been Spaniards.' And we just had to laugh, you know.
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Like, in her world and the stories that she heard growing up, it was a shame to have lost independence. These were the stories she heard when she was a little girl. And so my mother and I looked at each other like, 'What? Everything we know is wrong,' you know? And my grandmother herself, you know, is a wonderful storyteller. How much of what she tells is true and how much of it is made up has always been a question, and so who knows even if this story is a true story. ... So I suppose Maria Sirena as a character pulls from her too, just as a great storyteller and someone who could literally spend three days during a hurricane telling you stories of her life and not tire.
On how the Cuban story may be coming full circle with the thawing of U.S.-Cuba relations
It's interesting thinking about the moment we find ourselves in in Cuba and what I hope is sort of an opening up of freedoms for people on the island, you know, and sort of an end of political prisoners and sort of those things and hopefully helping fulfill the promise of the 19th-century revolution — of a free and democratic Cuba. So that would be my great hope. And it's interesting thinking about how the vision that Jos Mart had and Antonio Maceo had could play out now in the 21st century.
Read an excerpt of The Distant Marvels