Yoani Sanchez

Insights into Havana Life

Sánchez's book is very easy to read. It is a collection of three years worth of blog posts, each about a page long. The posts cover many topics, but few topics are covered in great detail.

Reading the intimate details about life in Havana is illuminating. The lack of running water, the crumbling infrastructure, the joy of finding Krazy Glue, the need to bring pillows and clean syringes to a hospital, and the problems with purchasing anything but bread paint a picture of a difficult life for all residents. The underground economy, which includes pirated copies of "Law and Order" and the installation of hidden satellite dishes, is another topic that receives some print in the book.

Unfortunately, because the book is taken straight from the blog, it is not very organized. The names of people she brings up are unknown to a reader like me with limited knowledge of the country and requires more explanation from Sánchez. I imagine that reading the blog would be much easier, because the reader could get those explanations instantly. Many posts are about the author's awards and prior publications, which create problems because she is unable to travel outside Cuba in order to receive them or attend publishing conferences. Many posts are also about Sánchez's attempts to organize bloggers within Cuba and the difficulty she has accessing the internet in order to use sites like WordPress, YouTube and Twitter.

Perhaps this wasn't the book for it, but I would have liked to read more about the foreign investments in Cuba that Sánchez discussed. There was little in the way of actual economics in this book, aside from the surely legitimate complaints about the government making statistics up about cane and beef harvests.

As an author, Sánchez is very poetic. She uses wonderful imagery. She is clearly a brave person who deserves praise for pioneering the need for freedom of the press in every country.… (mehr)

Havana Real by Yoani Sanchez is a collection of her posts from Generation Y, a blog she maintains through the help of friends in Spain. Cuba is none to keen on allowing internet access, especially blog access, so maintaining a blog under these conditions takes a certain amount of creativity and a hell of a lot of gumption.

The Melville House book presents Sanchez's blog posts in chronological order and they are left to stand for themselves. Sanchez outlines how things work, or more often than not, don't work in her neighborhood, and in Cuba as a whole. There are a number of entries devoted to keeping the apartment building working, including the cranky elevator which hasn't seen proper maintenance in years. There are some universal posts about being a parent.

What's missing, though, is editorial comment. The blog is well written but it is still a blog. Printing a blog in book format doesn't automatically make it a book. Some extra commentary to bring in the big picture, either as side bars or footnotes, would have make this an extraordinary book. As it stands, it's a collection of blog posts made under usual circumstances, that taken out of that context, read not all that different from any other blog.… (mehr)

This book I received from NetGalley. I was immediately attracted to it when I saw it when I just came back from a holiday in Cuba. A book about the real life there. Most likely something completely different from what I had seen as a tourist. My premise was true, a tourist doesn't see the real Cuba.

This book contains the post of the author's blog between 2006 and 2010. This makes it a quite slow read, as you normally don't read a blog from beginning to end. Some things seem to be double. That annoys when you read about a year in a week. It won't when you follow the blog. So that's what I did in the end, follow her blog at http://www.desdecuba.com/generationy/

The book shows the struggle live is on Cuba and the way people aren't free to say what they think. The book is very touching and I'm happy I read about this side of this mysterious island.

http://boekenwijs.blogspot.com/2011/09/havana-real.html… (mehr)