Prologue
One: Worms Like Us
Two: Bernaro Benes: Our Man in Miami
Three: Butterlfies
Four: Héctor Sanyustiz: A Way Out
Five: Ernesto Pinto: An Embassy Under Siege
Six: Unwanted
Seven: Napoleón Vilaboa: The Golden Door
Eight: Leaving Cuba
Nine: Captain Mike Howell: Sailing Mañana
Ten: Tempest-Tost
Eleven: Teeming Shore
Twelve: With Open Arms
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Mirta Ojito was born in Havana, Cuba, and came to the United States in 1980 in the Mariel boatlift. She has received the American Society of Newspaper Editors' Award for best foreign reporting, and she shared the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting, for her contribution to the series "How Race Is Lived in America." Her work has appeared in several anthologies, including Written into History: Pulitzer Prize Reporting of the Twentieth Century from The New York Times, edited by Anthony Lewis. Ojito has taught journalism at New York University, Columbia University, and the University of Miami. She writes for The New York Times from Miami.
“It’s impossible not to admire the boldness, the candor, the moral
toughness of Ms. Ojito’s writing. In this wonderful memoir, she
ransoms herself from the seductions of nostalgia, and reclaims
instead the beleaguered Cuba of her childhood—a Cuba that is all
the more interesting for not being looked at through the prism of
longing and desire.”—The New York Times
“In Finding Mañana, Mirta Ojito goes a long way in righting
the Mariel story and bestowing some belated dignity on this ragged
stepchild of exile history.”—The Los Angeles Times
"Ms. Ojito's book is filled with the anguish of separation and the
tragedy of living under a merciless regime. But it also celebrates
familial bonds and undying love—not to mention freedom itself, a
gift too often taken for granted by those of us who have never had
to live without it.”—The Wall Street Journal
“The insight Ojito brings to bear, coupled with the crispness if
her prose…make this memoir required reading for anyone interested
in the history of post-Batista Cuba or Cuban-American
relations.”—The Washington Post
“New York Times reporter Mirta Ojito melds the personal with
the political in a moving account of her family's departure from
Cuba. She also provides a solid historical context for those five
months in 1980 when 125,000 Cubans arrived in Florida, a mass
exodus that came to be known as the Mariel boat
lift.”—People
“Ojito’s historical reconstruction is fascinating... (She) has
created a poignant and poetic memoir of an important moment in
Cuban and US history.”—The Washington Times
“…this is much more than one Cuban exile’s bittersweet tale; it’s
the memoir of an entire era.” —Times-Picayune
“Ojito's book…is unlike most entries in the genre of the modern
memoir. More than a novelistic exercise in creative recollection,
it’s a skillful blend of reportage and family history about a
pivotal international event.”—Sun-Sentinel
“Like many Cuban exiles, Ojito says she left part of her soul in
Cuba. The good news is the rest of it came over with her intact.
Plenty of it went into this book.”—St. Petersburg Times
“… a political drama … bound to be a page-turner.”—Palm
Beach Post
“A thorough and exciting account…a suspenseful story…A skillful
melding of individual personalities with the grand currents of
history.”—Kirkus Reviews
“...fast-paced and riveting…Ojito uses her formidable research, eye
for detail and interviewing skills to lay bare the
behind-the-scenes machinations…through her writing, she has opened
a window for others, and offers a fine introduction to the human
face of history.”—Bookpage
“…a rich, but nuanced picture of life in Cuba under Castro and the
intimately personal nature of politics.”—Library Journal
“Until I read this book, the Mariel refugees were headlines in a
newspaper, stereotypes fed by political rhetoric. In Finding
Mañana, Mirta Ojito has given me a peek behind the headlines, and a
sense of how history affects the individual." —Esmeralda
Santiago, author of When I was Puerto Rican
“Finding Mañana is a strongly written, straight-shooting and
affecting memoir about one family’s experiences leading up to the
Mariel boatlift out of Cuba. Rich in detail and concise in
its capturing of that chapter of Cuban history, the book is also a
touching tale of a young woman’s coming of age during a time of
great political turmoil and personal travails.”—Oscar Hijuelos,
author of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love
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