A review by jwinchell
Letters from Cuba by Ruth Behar

5.0

I’m a big Ruth Behar fan. I loved Lucky Broken Girl and she did amazingly with a version of her family’s escape from early Nazi Europe to Cuba. Esther’s father had gone ahead from Poland a few years before and had saved enough for one family member to join him, and Esther, eldest child of 5, insisted that it be her. We learn about her experiences traveling to and in Cuba from the letters she collects in a notebook to her younger sister Malka. The author’s note is, of course, worth reading as we learn that Esther is based on Behar’s Baba, who forged a life for the family in Cuba before moving to New York. Esther makes many friends in the countryside town they reside in, including Afro Cubans with a history of enslavement and Chinese immigrants. They also encounter some Nazi inspired hatred, which made its way to Cuba. Behar weaves the history and the traditions in so effortlessly; I can tell that she is also an anthropologist. I loved this novel in letters— an epistolary— and will recommend it to students who want to learn a new angle of WW II history.