 Books: by Title: Scatter My
Ashes Over Havana
The saying goes: you can't go home again. Olga Karman says you
must.
No matter how difficult the encounter might be, it gives us
perhaps our best chance to come to terms with ourselves.
Olga Karman recreates a vast piece
of personal and social history as she describes her flight from
her native Cuba amid politicial turmoil, her struggle for a new
life in the United States, and an eventful return visit to Cuba
some 37 years afterward. Scatter My Ashes Over Havana
depicts these experiences with a poet's keen language.
It shows the flight of Hispanic peoples for social and
political recognition in Buffalo, a city that receives an
especially colorful and sympathetic portrayal.
Raúl and I worked on a mission for another
Puerto Rican named Raúl. The man was running for city court
judge, the first time a Hispanic had done so in Buffalo. Son
of a migrant family, Raúl Figueroa had worked next to his
father in the tomato fields not far from Buffalo, scrubbing
his little green hands with Clorox so other kids at school
wouldn't make fun of him. His high-school guidance counselor
had urged him to go into vocational training: "You're
good with cars and electrical things. You're not really
college material." Figueroa ignored the advice, went on
to college and law school, and passed the New York State Bar
exam on his first try.
"That election summer of 1982 turned many Buffalo
Hispanics into first-time campaign workers who perfumed the
Board of Elections rooms with the scent of pasteles,
rice-and-pigeon-peas, pastelillo meat pies...
This is a book about exile and immigration, about the search
for identity in a new land, and about a woman's hard work in
making a life for herself and her children. It is also, most
profoundly, a book about finding home.
 A sharp left, a
right, and I spot her: my house. Can this be my street? It's
deserted, silent. I feel as if I'm swimming under water with
plugs in my ears. Never mind. Here she is. Mi casa. Mi
amiga. They've painted you cornflower blue, just like
Onésima's bluing cubes. How pretty you look in blue.
Conchita Food Products, a large sign in front proclaims.
Conchita used to mean and apparently still means a
compote of guava marmalade, grated coconut and grapefruit
shells in heavy syrup. Mi casa, the Revolution has
sweetened you. I want to run inside ...
"I lived here long ago. May I come in?" ... I want
to touch, but don't dare, the wrought-iron porch door to
which Roberto and I clung for support when we were learning
to walk...
"'Who remembers how Havana
glowed at night long ago?' Olga Karman does. And much more, in
this poetic, tactile memoir about loss and the sometimes futile
search for home."
—MIRTA OJITO, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist & author
of Finding Mañana: A Memoir of a Cuban Exodus
'In Scatter My Ashes Over
Havana, her evocative memoir of exile in the late
twentieth century, Olga Karman has produced a portrait of
feminine courage in the face of political and private adversity.
To a lively account of a Cuban exile's life in the United States,
she brings a passionate understanding of history and a subtle eye
for its nuances."
—WENDY GIMBEL, author of Havana Dreams
"Deeply felt and beautifully written, Olga
Karman's memoir undertakes a probing and unsentimental
exploration of the high cost and moderate rewards of exile. A gem
of a book!"
—GUSTAVO PEREZ FIRMAT, Feinson Professor in the Humanities,
Columbia University
"Scatter My Ashes Over Havana
is a unique story of a Cuban woman's struggle to live away from
her homeland and to assert herself in the midst of dispossession.
With honesty, deftness and dignity, Olga Karman traces the
multiple roles she assumes in her exile, those of daughter,
mother, wife, student and teacher. Her return to Cuba,
harrowingly described in this memoir, represents the triumph of
will over circumstance."
—PABLO MEDINA, poet & author of The Cigar Roller
ISBN: 0-9765096-4-4
$17.95
| 
