Cuba on the Verge: An Island in Transition

Cuba on the Verge: An Island in Transition by McCoy, Terry. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780821228029.

This riveting analogy showcases the work of leading Cuban and American writers and photographers and offers unprecedented insight into life in the island nation today. While the world ponders Cubas future, and the United States weighs the effects of the trade embargo imposed more than 40 years ago, Cubans go about their everyday lives overcoming obstacles with a mixture of about their everyday lifes overcoming obstacles with a mixture of ingenuity, intelligence, perseverance, and above all else, a sense of humor. How does this transitional moment in the islands history find expression in the lives of the Cuban people? What do the social, cultural, and personal landscapes of Cuba look and feel like today? CUBA ON THE VERGE is an honest and balanced portrayal of the complex realities of modern Cuban life. Critically acclaimed novelise Ruseell Banks recalls his dream as a young man of joining the Revolution--and climbs the Sierra Maestra in an attempt to come to terms with that vision of long ago; Cristina Garcia, author of Dreaming in Cuban, writes about the experience of exile and the adaptations it engenders; New Yorker correspondent Jon Lee Anderson writes about the New Middle Class in Cuba; and Antonio Jose Ponte, one of the most talented of the current generation of Cuban writers, meditates on the unique sense of time on the island. Essays and portfolios of images are linked to central themes, incuding Afro-Cuban culture, traditional music versus the cutting edge, architecture, sexuality, Santeria, rural life, exile, and the role of women in Cuban society.