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Reviews:
The New York
Times - April 8, 2005
In ''Finding Manana,'' Mirta Ojito's impressive evocation of growing up
in Havana in the 1970's, there is no place for nostalgia. In trenchant, muscular
prose suitable for describing Cuba's increasingly grim realities, Ms. Ojito,
a reporter for The New York Times, writes about her coming-of-age and her family's
rescue in the Mariel boatlift of 1980.
Her postmodern Cuba is an isolated island where fractured images of absurdity abound and fatalism is a hedge against madness: ''No one could get in; no one could get out. God and the Beatles were forbidden, men with long hair were arrested, homosexuals and artists were sent to labor camps....
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.
See
Complete Review
Wall Street
Journal - April
28, 2005
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.
See
Complete Review
Time Inc.
- People Magazine - April 25, 2005 [3
STARS]
SECTION: PICKS & PANS/BOOKS;
Pg. 43
By:
Natalie Danford
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.
See
Complete Review
The
New York Times - May 15, 2005
Marielitos' Way By
Alexandra Starr
'Seventeen years, eight months and 10 days'' after she left Havana, Ojito,
who'd been sent to Cuba to cover Pope John Paul II's 1998 visit, went to her
old home, and decided to find and thank the captain of the Mañana, the
boat that had ferried her to the United States. ''That quest became the impetus
that led to these pages,'' she writes, ''the story of my journey -- from red-beret
wearing Communist pioneer to a soaking wet, filthy refugee stepping onto the
docks of Key West, too young and bewildered to fully comprehend the events
that had swept me ashore and given me new life.
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Complete Review
Washington
Post - Sunday, May 15, 2005
Listening to the Voice of America
Those well-researched
stories drive home the effects of that era's political climate on individual
lives, and even on the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan. The insight Ojito
brings to bear, coupled with the crispness of her prose -- especially
her detailed descriptions of diplomatic finagling -- make this memoir required
reading for everyone interested in the history of post-Batista Cuba or
of Cuban-American relations.
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Complete Review
Washington
Times - May 22, 2005
Either way, it
is a fair bet that Mr. Castro will not be pleased with this book.
For her part, Mrs. Ojito won't be drawn in to the bitter internecine
world of exile politics, saying only that one unintended consequence
to the brief opening
in 1980 is that "it got me here. I'm grateful for that." That eventually
led to this Marielita writing "Finding Manana." We are all the richer
for that.
See
Complete Review
Times-Picayune
(New Orleans) -
April 17, 2005
The
luxury of taking anything lightly was one denied Ojito in
her childhood, and the weight
of her initial ambivalence about leaving Cuba lingers throughout "Finding
Manana." As a result, this is much more than one Cuban exile's bittersweet
tale; it's the memoir of an entire era.
See
Complete Review .
—Kirkus
Reviews - January 15, 2005
A thorough and exciting account of the events
leading to the daring, massive exodus of more than 125,000 people from
Cuba's Mariel
harbor in 1980. A skillful melding of individual personalities with the grand
currents of history.
See
Complete Review
Bookpage
- April
2005
Journalists,
it has been said, often write the first draft of history. In her first
book, a
memoir of her escape from Fidel Castro’s Cuba, Pulitzer Prize-winning
New York
Times reporter Mirta Ojito highlights the extraordinary courage of ordinary
people.
See
Complete Review
St. Petersburg
Times (Florida) - April
10, 2005
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.
See
Complete Review
Los
Angeles Times - April 24, 2005
In "Finding Mañana," Mirta
Ojito - who made the crossing with her parents at the age of 16 -
goes
a long way in righting the Mariel story and bestowing some belated
dignity on this ragged stepchild of exile history. Ojito has wisely
merged her family's story - an abbreviated version appeared in 2000
in the New York Times Magazine - with the larger political story.
See
Complete Review
Library Journal
Reviews - May
1, 2005
...a rich, but nuanced
picture of life in Cuba under Castro and the intimately personal
nature of politics.
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Complete Review
Features:
NPR Radio - Weekend Edition - Saturday, April 30, 2005
SCOTT SIMON, host
'Finding
Mañana' Details
Cuban 'Exodus'
Ojito, a writer for the New York Times, contributed to a series for that
paper that won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. She joins
Scott Simon to discuss her memoir.
See
Transcript of Interview
NPR Radio - Fresh
Air Tuesday, April 26, 2005
TERRY GROSS, host
Mirta Ojito discusses
her memoir, "Finding Manana: A Memoir of a Cuban Exodus"
See
Transcript of Interview
PoynterOnline.com -
Posted May 4, 2005
By
Chip Scanlan
When the Reporter
is Part of the Story: Mirta Ojito's Memoir of Cuban Exodus
...this is
what I took from this incredible turn of events: that every story has at least
two
sides to it and that no matter how careful and balanced and objective you are,
there is always a side of the story that is beyond reach. Aboard the Valley
Chief, my family and I and dozens of people like us were the part of the story
The New York Times reporter unintentionally and unknowingly missed.
See
Complete Feature
Sun-Sentinel
(Fort Lauderdale, FL) - April 11, 2005
Released this month to coincide with the 25th anniversary
of the Mariel boatlift, Ojito's book, Finding Manana: A Memoir of a Cuban
Exodus
($24.95), 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.
See
Complete Feature
Palm Beach Post -
April 10, 2005
Finding Manana " is no mere memoir. It's a personal account
that weaves in the broader story, revealing a wealth of details
about how Mariel was
set in motion.
See
Complete Feature
The Florida
Times-Union -
March 29, 2005
Unlike other memoirs
that are mainly steeped in personal memories and experiences, Ojito used her
journalistic expertise by combining her story with those of
other Cubans who were key to bringing about the boatlift....
And to her it was natural
to structure the narrative around two voices: the authoritative, journalistic
voice that would provide the historical and
political context of U.S.-Cuban relations and the personal profiles that
would result in an honest, searing story.
See
Complete Feature
Gambit Weekly
- New Orleans, LA - April 19, 2005
By
Cynthia Joyce
Safe Passage
The first time Mirta Ojito
found Capt. Mike Howell was luck. The second time took three years
of hard work.
See
Complete Feature
