Next Year in Havana--For Some No Melting or Assimilation

Next Year in Havana by Chanel Cleeton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

For Some No Melting or Assimilation
2017--Marisol Ferrera's grandmother has just died and left a request that Marisol return her ashes to Cuba, the place of her birth. Marisol has never set foot in Cuba but Elisa has filled her head with stories of Havana and the life led by the sugar plantation rich Perez family.
1958--19 year old Elisa Perez is an affluent debutante in Havana. She and her two older sisters rule the society of the Batista regime. But there is discontent among the poorer Cuban society and many young people are joining one revolutionary group or another. Fidel Castro is one of the most successful in gathering young men around him determined to overthrow Batista and spread the wealth of the many, like the Perez family, among the many more impoverished on the island.

1959--The Perez family leaves Havana for Florida. The story is told in alternating voices of Marisol in present day Cuba and Elisa in the days of revolution. Today's Cuba is much, much different than the place of her grandmother's stories. Indeed, it is much, much different than the people who followed Castro imagined it would be.

What was interesting to me was the sense that Marisol considers herself Cuban, though her father and she and her siblings were born in Florida. Spanish was her first language and in times of stress she thinks and prays in it. It is with amazement that she finds herself unable to relate to the actual place although she experiences a sense of homecoming upon first arriving at Jose Marti airport. I kept wondering where the melting pot of lore and the assimilation that I experienced as a granddaughter of German and Irish immigrants had gone.

My German forebears did not have to leave Germany--it was well before the rise of Hitler or even WW I. My Irish grandmother didn't have to leave Ireland--the famine did not happen during her lifetime. Yet, they would not teach their children their native languages, since English is spoken here. There were not lengthy stories of the old country and my parents had no longing to go to Europe and see the old home. I appreciate my German and Irish heritage but don't consider myself to be either. It would be nice to travel to those countries but I don't have a desire or need to see where they grew up. I found these same feelings to be true in the kids I grew up with who had the same heritage and even those of Italian and Puerto Rican backgrounds. So, is it because the Cuban immigrants felt forced from their homeland that they have never given up that expectation of next year in Havana--even those who had never, ever spent last year or any year there?

Though the story is fascinating, the characters all well drawn and inviting, the description of place in both eras colorful and beautiful, that inability to discern the lack of assimilation and melting into the American pot nagged throughout.

It would appear there is to be a follow up story of Elisa's sister, Beatriz. Unlike the gentle Elisa, she is quite the flashing eyed, daring older sister. I look forward to her tale.

This is a review of an ARC provided by Book Browse for an honest review.