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Finding Manana: A Memoir of a Cuban Exodus
Finding Ma�ana is a vibrant, moving memoir of one family's life in Cuba and their wrenching departure. Mirta Ojito was born in Havana and raised there until the unprecedented events of the Mariel boatlift brought her to Miami, one teenager among more than a hundred thousand fellow refugees. Now a reporter for The New York Times, Ojito goes back to reckon with her past and to find the people who set this exodus in motion and brought her to her new home. She tells their stories and hers in superb and poignant detail-chronicling both individual lives and a major historical event.Growing up, Ojito was eager to excel and fit in, but her parents'--and eventually her own--incomplete devotion to the revolution held her back. As a schoolgirl, she yearned to join Castro's Young Pioneers, but as a teenager in the 1970s, when she understood the darker side of the Cuban revolution and learned more about life in el norte from relatives living abroad, she began to wonder if she and her parents would be safer and happier elsewhere. By the time Castro announced that he was opening Cuba's borders for those who wanted to leave, she was ready to go; her parents were more than ready: They had been waiting for this opportunity since they married, twenty years before.
Finding Ma�ana gives us Ojito's own story, with all of the determination and intelligence--and the will to confront darkness--that carried her through the boatlift and made her a prizewinning journalist. Putting her reporting skills to work on the events closest to her heart, she finds the boatlift's key players twenty-five years later, from the exiles who negotiated with Castro to the Vietnam vet on whose boat, Ma�ana, she finally crossed the treacherous Florida Strait. Finding Ma�ana is the engrossing and enduring story of a family caught in the midst of the tumultuous politics of the twentieth century.
Finding Ma�ana gives us Ojito's own story, with all of the determination and intelligence--and the will to confront darkness--that carried her through the boatlift and made her a prizewinning journalist. Putting her reporting skills to work on the events closest to her heart, she finds the boatlift's key players twenty-five years later, from the exiles who negotiated with Castro to the Vietnam vet on whose boat, Ma�ana, she finally crossed the treacherous Florida Strait. Finding Ma�ana is the engrossing and enduring story of a family caught in the midst of the tumultuous politics of the twentieth century.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
47 people are currently reading
1039 people want to read
About the author
Mirta Ojito
4 books25 followersMirta Ojito is a journalist, professor, and author who has worked at the Miami Herald, El Nuevo Herald, and the New York Times. The recipient of an Emmy for the documentary Harvest of Misery as well as a shared Pulitzer for national reporting in 2001 for a series of articles about race in America for the New York Times, Ojito was an assistant professor of journalism at Columbia University for almost nine years. She is the author of two award-winning nonfiction books: Finding Mañana: A Memoir of a Cuban Exodus and Hunting Season: Immigration and Murder in an All-American Town. Currently, Ojito is a senior director on the NBC News Standards team working at Telemundo Network,
A refugee from Cuba, her work often explores the complexities of identity, belonging, and the quiet power of resilience. She lives in Coral Gables, Florida, where she is endlessly inspired—and occasionally outnumbered—by her three grown sons and too many plants. Deeper than the Ocean is her first novel.
A refugee from Cuba, her work often explores the complexities of identity, belonging, and the quiet power of resilience. She lives in Coral Gables, Florida, where she is endlessly inspired—and occasionally outnumbered—by her three grown sons and too many plants. Deeper than the Ocean is her first novel.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 87 reviews
August 4, 2009
There was so, so much I didn’t know about Cuba. Considering that the country is only ninety miles away and intricately tied in many historically significant ways to the U.S., this book really should be required reading in our schools.
As a thirteen-year-old in 1980 I had vaguely heard of a lot of boats full of Cubans heading for Florida, but I never understood the significance of this in the context of Cuba’s history, nor did I fully grasp the complexity behind more recent stories of individual Cubans such as Elian Gonzalez, the 6-year old forcibly removed from the closet by rifle-toting federal agents.
This is the type of memoir that is not merely concerned with the author’s life but also expertly weaves in a wealth of relevant nonfiction—in this case the Mariel boatlift of 1980, the history of Cuba, the plight—and successes—of Cuban immigrants in Florida, and the anguish and torment of families forcibly separated by politics.
This Pulitzer-prize-winning author excels at placing individual stories in historical context while simultaneously bringing the characters fully to life.
EXCERPT:
“Listening attentively from her perch under a mango tree was Mercedes Alvarez, a twenty-two-year-old nurse who was five months pregnant and had her three small children—aged five, two, and one—with her…. It took the family about an hour to find a place where they felt they could squeeze into the crowd and spend the night. Mercedes held tightly to her children’s hands, fearing to lose them in the multitude. When they cried for milk, she gave them pieces of the crumbled cake and rocked them to sleep one after the other. Surrounded by their tiny bodies, she began to think of the consequences of what she had done…. It occurred to her that this might be a trap, that the government might send them all to jail. She was calmed somewhat by the realization that if anything happened to her, the government would still provide for her children’s health care and education. This paradox—that the same government she was trying to flee was also the one that she knew would take care of her children—made her question why she really wanted to leave her country….
Day and night, government-controlled radio stations droned over loudspeakers, urging the refugees to return to their homes, since Peru couldn’t do anything for them; they had to trust the Cuban government. Some people stuffed cigarette butts in their ears to drown out the noise. Portable bathrooms were installed around the perimeter of the compound, but some refugees refused to use them for fear they would not be allowed to get back inside the grounds, preferring to relieve themselves in plain sight of other refugees. The garden soon became a fetid cauldron where it was difficult to walk and impossible to lie down….
Around the fifth day, Mercedes moved inside the embassy and had her first bite of food…. The Cuban government distributed food, handing boxes of yellow rice with pork or ribs and sometimes even fish and rice and beans over the fence—but not nearly enough for everyone. The Peruvian embassy didn’t have the resources or the personnel to prepare food for so many people. Sometimes rations for 2,500 were doled out to a crowd of almost 11,000 people. Fights erupted, and mothers bore the marks of their desperation: bleeding arms from the scratches produced by the spiky ends of the fence as they extended their hands over it to try to grab food for their children. The number of rations was kept low intentionally to create chaos, to demonstrate to the world that the people inside the embassy were dangerous.”
As a thirteen-year-old in 1980 I had vaguely heard of a lot of boats full of Cubans heading for Florida, but I never understood the significance of this in the context of Cuba’s history, nor did I fully grasp the complexity behind more recent stories of individual Cubans such as Elian Gonzalez, the 6-year old forcibly removed from the closet by rifle-toting federal agents.
This is the type of memoir that is not merely concerned with the author’s life but also expertly weaves in a wealth of relevant nonfiction—in this case the Mariel boatlift of 1980, the history of Cuba, the plight—and successes—of Cuban immigrants in Florida, and the anguish and torment of families forcibly separated by politics.
This Pulitzer-prize-winning author excels at placing individual stories in historical context while simultaneously bringing the characters fully to life.
EXCERPT:
“Listening attentively from her perch under a mango tree was Mercedes Alvarez, a twenty-two-year-old nurse who was five months pregnant and had her three small children—aged five, two, and one—with her…. It took the family about an hour to find a place where they felt they could squeeze into the crowd and spend the night. Mercedes held tightly to her children’s hands, fearing to lose them in the multitude. When they cried for milk, she gave them pieces of the crumbled cake and rocked them to sleep one after the other. Surrounded by their tiny bodies, she began to think of the consequences of what she had done…. It occurred to her that this might be a trap, that the government might send them all to jail. She was calmed somewhat by the realization that if anything happened to her, the government would still provide for her children’s health care and education. This paradox—that the same government she was trying to flee was also the one that she knew would take care of her children—made her question why she really wanted to leave her country….
Day and night, government-controlled radio stations droned over loudspeakers, urging the refugees to return to their homes, since Peru couldn’t do anything for them; they had to trust the Cuban government. Some people stuffed cigarette butts in their ears to drown out the noise. Portable bathrooms were installed around the perimeter of the compound, but some refugees refused to use them for fear they would not be allowed to get back inside the grounds, preferring to relieve themselves in plain sight of other refugees. The garden soon became a fetid cauldron where it was difficult to walk and impossible to lie down….
Around the fifth day, Mercedes moved inside the embassy and had her first bite of food…. The Cuban government distributed food, handing boxes of yellow rice with pork or ribs and sometimes even fish and rice and beans over the fence—but not nearly enough for everyone. The Peruvian embassy didn’t have the resources or the personnel to prepare food for so many people. Sometimes rations for 2,500 were doled out to a crowd of almost 11,000 people. Fights erupted, and mothers bore the marks of their desperation: bleeding arms from the scratches produced by the spiky ends of the fence as they extended their hands over it to try to grab food for their children. The number of rations was kept low intentionally to create chaos, to demonstrate to the world that the people inside the embassy were dangerous.”
February 14, 2020
Mirta Ojito takes her own story and mixes it in with others, such as Hector Sanyustiz, the man that crashed a bus thru the Peruvian embassy in 1980 under fire by Cuban guards. During one of his tantrums when Peru refused to turn over the escaped exiles, Castro removed his Cuban guards and within a day over 10,000 folks poured into the embassy. Castro eventually allowed the port of Mariel to be opened up to anybody who wanted to pick up their loved ones (plus a few criminals and mental cases that he threw in), at the end over 125,000 Cubans leaving before he decided to shut down Mariel. Mirta Ojito provides insight into what life was like growing up in a family indifferent to Castro in 1970s Cuba. The book is full of accounts of the oppression, sometimes subtle, of those that do not support Castro's dictatorial regime. Mirta narrates in detail her use as an agricultural child laborer while in her early teens. Evidence of the political apartheid system in Cuba comes to Mirta as a child when she accidentally gets hold of a copy of her school record; where several of her teachers hold against her going to church, her parents' irreverence to support Castro's political activities, and their regular communication with kin in the U.S. The surveillance by the neighborhood Committees for the Defense of the Revolution is evident when her father gets stopped with a bag of potatoes illegally obtained in the black market. Ojito eventually gets to the part when they receive the paperwork to leave Cuba and are processed thru chaotic conditions in Mariel. I found the book easy to read, enjoyable, and descriptive of life by a typical family in Castro's Cuba. As a matter of fact, this book by Ojito is recommended in my own book about Memories from the Land of the Intolerant Tyrant (available from Blue Note Books) as one of the best describing life in Cuba.
August 14, 2007
I LOVED this book. Cuba fascinates me, and this memoir gave such a vivid depiction of daily life in Cuba during childhood. She alternates chapters-- one about her life and her family and their exodus from Cuba with the Mariel boat lift in the early 80's, and then another that gives the historical and political context surrounding the boat lift and its aftermath. I thought it was beautiful to read and a fascinating story.
October 8, 2012
Not at all what I expected from a Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist. I expected a touching story of the difficulties of leaving your home country and settling into a new one, as well as some detail on the hardship of living in Castro's Cuba. Book hops around constantly introducing new people, new topics. Just as you are getting into one development, the author introduces a new one with all its details. I almost put the book aside many times. Only became interesting towards the end with her description of the actual process of leaving.
November 24, 2011
More journalism than memoir, Ojita forfeits the emotional side of her experience for a painstakingly accurate description of the Mariel Boatlift. The historical facts behind the 1980 mass emigration from Cuba to Southern Florida are fascinating, but Ojito's objectivity make for a dry story. She reveals only a thin layer of what was surely a deeply emotional experience for her and her family. As a teenager who did not speak English, she left everything she knew, and everything her family owned, for a risky and potentially disastrous escape from Cuba to the United States, but doesn't fully reveal her emotional reaction. For a truly heartfelt and powerful memoir of the Cuban immigrant experience, read Waiting for Snow in Havana, by Carlos Eire, who was sent as a child from Havana to Miami to escape the 1962 Cuban Revolution.
June 30, 2010
Cuba under Castro. One family's and one young girl's experiences leading up to the 1980 Mariel boatlift. Until I read this and Arenas' Before Night Falls, I, like most Americans, really had no true picture of what life under Castro was like. This isn't as gritty as Arenas' memoir, but for most people it will be much easier to read for that reason. The author, who arrived here as a teenager, has gone on to become a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and university professor.
August 29, 2007
I would recommend this book to anyone who would like to learn more about Castro's Cuba, refugees, or who isn't sure how they feel about immigration. It was amazing. 8/1/07
Read again for book club and didn't find it as great as the first time, but I do think it was an informative and interesting nonfiction read for those who want to know more about Cuba.
Read again for book club and didn't find it as great as the first time, but I do think it was an informative and interesting nonfiction read for those who want to know more about Cuba.
December 6, 2020
A very-well researched book that shifts in and out of personal memoir of the 1980 "Mariel boat lift" by a journalist who experienced it as a teenager with her family from Havana. Ojito has been a reporter for the Miami Herald and NY Times and was the perfect person to write this history/ memoir. I grew up in South Florida and have traveled to Cuba as a tourist, so I was very interested in the material.
A good companion memoir is Before Night Falls by Reinaldo Arenas.
A good companion memoir is Before Night Falls by Reinaldo Arenas.
January 2, 2019
Life was not always easy for the current New York Times journalist, in fact in this memoir she goes into the depth of her family’s struggle removing themselves from Cuba at the peak of its communist take over. She speaks of the hot summers where she played in the streets with her friends, her first television set her father saved up for, rice pudding her mother made, all the clothing she wore was made from her mother’s hands, and what it really was like to have to go through the rigorous mistreatment from school officials due to her parent's political views. To be kind. I do not think this book was of good quality. At most times the narrative was quite dry and repetitive, which didn't seem to pick up until they left Cuba. Although, I did learn more about Cuba than previously, so something good did come from reading.
August 1, 2007
I just finished reading this book but highly reccomend it. The writing is done well without a lot of fluff. Perhaps the best aspect of the book is the education about events that tooks place in Cuba before I was even born.
It starts a bit slow and it takes some time to really get into it as the characters develop a bit slow, but stick with it you will not be disapointed.
It starts a bit slow and it takes some time to really get into it as the characters develop a bit slow, but stick with it you will not be disapointed.
May 27, 2008
A great introduction to what life was really like for a Cuban teenager who came to the US in the Mariel boatlift. I had no idea just how oppressive Castro's Cuba is/was. One of those books you can't help but share with your friends. Very well researched and beautifully written - I've been an avid fiction reader but if there is non-fiction written this well... I'm converting :-)
November 9, 2018
This was very well written! I know a good amount about Cuba but I knew very little about the Mariel boat lift other than when it happened. This was written in a way that makes you feel like you are with the author and the other people involved. I have already recommended this to many people including members of my extended Cuban-American family.
August 27, 2015
As the child of Cuban immigrants, this was a fascinating read that gave me a better perspective on the history going on during the Mariel boat lift - the well-researched history made it even more compelling.
February 1, 2011
Fascinating memoir of growing up in Cuba and participating in the Mariel boatlift. The author researched more than her own story, also telling how Mariel came about and the fates of some others who were involved. There is an audiobook in Spanish called El Manana.
February 10, 2012
This is a beautifully written memoir with well research history woven into the chronicle of the Mariel boatlift. It is also available in Spanish and I have recommended it to refugees I meet from Cuba who attend Cultural Orientation classes.
April 11, 2025
I love how the book seamlessly brought together a personal memoir and historical reporting. It gave a thorough yet personal story. It provides both the political and human sides of history... and how the story goes on long after the news coverage fades.
September 11, 2008
Excellent read if you are interested in Cuba's revolution and the impact on Cubans who now live in exile.
October 18, 2009
having lived a number of years in So FL,i always wanted to know more of the cuban immigration. i thought this was VERY informative and really enjoyed it.
March 26, 2010
Former parent and good friend wrote this book, good read!
December 16, 2025
This was simply incredible. So engaging and well written which makes sense considering the author is a Pulitzer ride winning journalist. I can’t believe this book is 20-years-old and I just learned about it. It was not just a memoir, but literary journalism at its best, telling of Cuba’s political history under Castro through stories of others’ experiences, specifically in the 70’s leading up to and during the Mariel Boatlift of 1980. Chapters alternated focus on the author’s experiences through memoir and on the stories of others who had remarkable involvement in these events.
I learned so much from reading this. To be honest, I picked this up for a couple reasons. First, I was Christmas shopping at Barnes & Noble the other day and saw this book on a table labeled “local author” along with her newly released fiction book (which I since have added to my soon TBR). But more than that, as a Miami transplant for just over two years, I’ve been very curious about the culture and history of the city and its people. Miami, as many know, is drastically different than any other part of Florida (where I was born and raised).
Mostly, I wanted to understand the political leanings of the people here in Miami (which I have strong feelings about). I, personally, find the typical political rhetoric to have many contradictions and holes that have genuinely confused me. In reading this, I felt that my thoughts and reasonings were not only validated as I learned more about the history, but further cemented.. however, I simultaneously learned more about the complexity of the nuances involved as well and why certain U.S. political figures were looked at in disdain and others venerated. I can see, now, more of the psychological impacts of all of the events of that time which still have ongoing repercussions today.
In all, i was fascinated and fully absorbed by Ojito’s writing, and I came away from this book feeling like I gained so much knowledge and understanding. In some ways, this understanding makes me feel slightly more settled in my new home of Miami. I highly recommend! She not only piqued my interest in the topic further, but, separately, I am excited to read her new fiction book as well!
I learned so much from reading this. To be honest, I picked this up for a couple reasons. First, I was Christmas shopping at Barnes & Noble the other day and saw this book on a table labeled “local author” along with her newly released fiction book (which I since have added to my soon TBR). But more than that, as a Miami transplant for just over two years, I’ve been very curious about the culture and history of the city and its people. Miami, as many know, is drastically different than any other part of Florida (where I was born and raised).
Mostly, I wanted to understand the political leanings of the people here in Miami (which I have strong feelings about). I, personally, find the typical political rhetoric to have many contradictions and holes that have genuinely confused me. In reading this, I felt that my thoughts and reasonings were not only validated as I learned more about the history, but further cemented.. however, I simultaneously learned more about the complexity of the nuances involved as well and why certain U.S. political figures were looked at in disdain and others venerated. I can see, now, more of the psychological impacts of all of the events of that time which still have ongoing repercussions today.
In all, i was fascinated and fully absorbed by Ojito’s writing, and I came away from this book feeling like I gained so much knowledge and understanding. In some ways, this understanding makes me feel slightly more settled in my new home of Miami. I highly recommend! She not only piqued my interest in the topic further, but, separately, I am excited to read her new fiction book as well!
November 10, 2021
This is one of those memoirs where the content is interesting but it's not elevated much by the prose. Ojito writes in a very straightforward style, which is to be expected as she's a journalist, but I found myself craving more artistry and colour from her words. The events have to speak for themselves, which they absolutely can—the Mariel Boatlift is dramatic and heartrending—but this couldn't been so much more affecting with a stronger voice behind it.
Cuba is no longer an obsession in my life. Rather, it is the imprint of my life, a dull pain that throbs at the slightest provocation: a word I thought I'd forgotten; a hymn that only former Communist Pioneers, like me, can still sing; a black-and-white picture of my family circa 1970 that my mother keeps on her night table; and that chocolate-colored lipstick I brought with me and is now tucked inside my medicine cabinet, just as my parents always kept the nearly empty container of Vicks VapoRub in theirs.
Cuba is no longer an obsession in my life. Rather, it is the imprint of my life, a dull pain that throbs at the slightest provocation: a word I thought I'd forgotten; a hymn that only former Communist Pioneers, like me, can still sing; a black-and-white picture of my family circa 1970 that my mother keeps on her night table; and that chocolate-colored lipstick I brought with me and is now tucked inside my medicine cabinet, just as my parents always kept the nearly empty container of Vicks VapoRub in theirs.
March 14, 2021
What an education! Turns out I knew nothing about modern Cuban history. The book is a little lacking in terms of the memoir part, but its chock full of history and profiles of the people who shaped and caused the Mariel boatlift. The authors memoir part really only covers her childhood in Cuba (and not her time in the U.S.) but the part it does cover is well done.
July 2, 2025
A superb book on one of the largest exodus of refugees from Castro’s Cuba. It is told masterfully by a brilliant journalist who was only a teenager when she left her home country and stepped on a small ship named Mañana.
October 30, 2023
Finding Mañana: A Memoir of a Cuban Exodus by Mirta Ojito
From the Perspective of a Second Generation Cuban-American
To preface my review of Finding Mañana: A Memoir of a Cuban Exodus , I wish to highlight an excerpt from Cuban poet and independence leader Jose Martí’s “Versos Sencillos” (“Simple Verses”) and an excerpt from Finding Mañana that I feel fits the tone of Mirta Ojito’s touching memoir:
“Oigo un suspiro, a través
De la tierras y la mar,
Y no es un suspiro, – es
Que mi hijo va a despertar.
…
Odio la máscara y vicio
Del corredor de mi hotel:
Me vuelvo al manso bullicio
De mi monte de laurel.
Con los pobres de la tierra
Quiero yo mi suerte echar:
El arroyo de la sierra
Me complace más que el mar.”
“I hear a sigh that passes
over lands and seas,
and it is not a sign – it is my son, awakening from sleep.
…
I hate the masks and vices
of the hallways of my hotel;
I turn to the gentle noises
of my woods of laurel.
With the wretched of the earth
I want to cast my lot:
A stream flowing over mountains suits me better than the sea.”
Jose Martí, “Versos Sencillos” (“Simple Verses”) (fragments of Verses I - III).
“This is the last time I’ll see Cuba. Take it in. Take it all in… I should have brought a rock with me, a little water, a handful of dirt, I thought… I had entered the world of exile, a zone where one must always walk alone, at one’s own pace, and only after burying a part of one’s soul” (Ojito 220-221).
The excerpt from Martí’s work conveys sentiments which I believe essential to the Cuban spirit: Community as your greatest strength (“It is my son, awakening from sleep”), home as your strongest bastion (“I turn to the gentle noises of my woods of laurel”, and compassion as your greatest ability (“With the wretched of the earth / I want to cast my lot). The Cuba that Martí spoke of in his writing is one bonded by the mutual desire to live freely. Ojito’s memoir discusses how political ideology threatened this founding vision of Martí, detailing her experience living in Fidel Castro-controlled Cuba leading up to the 1980 Mariel boatlift, a mass exodus of Cubans - or “gusanos”, as Castro derided them - that saw 125,266 Cubans immigrate to the US in a flotilla of civilian ships, often organized by Cuban-Americans residing in Miami and Florida. Yet, this is not a well-known historical event, despite 1% of Cuba’s population of approximately 9.8 million people leaving Cuba at the time. Why aren’t its main actors known? What was it like to be a “Marielito” (as the Cubans who left Cuba through the port of Mariel in 1980 came to be known), and how does Ojito’s memoir powerfully invoke the memory of this important event in Cuban history?
Ojito provides a vivid account of her childhood life in Cuba, as if she were still living there. She describes the alienation she experienced in school from her teachers due to aspects of her upbringing deemed as “counter revolutionary”, such as her family’s religiosity and her reluctance to become a Pioneer of Communism (“pionera”), a youth organization created by Castro to teach Cuban youth about the Revolution. Ojito masterfully details incidents of the aforementioned “Cuban spirit” conflicting with the political ideology of Castro which controlled the nation. For instance, Ojito described a story of a mother that initially supported the revolution who, upon hearing that her son was drafted and sent to fight in the Angolan Civil War, “grabbed the picture [of a baseball-playing Castro in a place of honor on top of her television] and threw it out her living room window… Because she had once been the president of the neighborhood watchdog committee and because people understood her pain, no one reported her to the police. Her kind neighbors assumed the poor woman had gone crazy” (Ojito 67). Anecdotes like this provide a deeply personal perspective that contributes to understanding the motivation for the Mariel boatlift, and I believe affirm Martí’s vision of the “Cuban spirit” still being present among Cubans amidst the restrictive politics of Castro.
I also want to point out the wide breadth of historical actors that Ojito highlights that contributed to making the boatlift happen. For the purposes of this review, I will highlight what I found to be the most interesting of these actors: Héctor Sanyustiz, a bus driver who inadvertently kicks off a series of events leading to Mariel when he crashes a bus into the Peruvian embassy to seek refuge there and eventually immigrate from Cuba. The whole story of Sanyustiz laid out by Ojito demonstrates the desperation of some Cubans to escape the politically stifling atmosphere of Castro’s making. Although Sanyustiz’s actions were largely forgotten due to his exile being treated much like the thousands of other Marielitos by the Cuban government, Ojito highlights what I find to be the most tragic part of the Mariel boatlift: its historical legacy.
As a journalist, Ojito weaves immensely personal stories with historical events and personal opinions to create a comprehensive reevaluation of the Mariel boatlift. What I found to be the most startling aspect of this reevaluation is Ojito’s exposure of how Mariel was used as a political tool by both the US and Castro. Since Castro controlled who went in and who went out of Cuba, he would control the daily makeup of “undesirable” Cubans who left the island. Castro would frequently have a high percentage of criminals be allowed to leave along with “gusanos” who had relatives in the US. If Castro received too much criticism for the percentage of criminals, he would increase the percentage of relatives and lower the percentage of criminals for a few days, and then reverse the numbers. I was so shocked by this because my own grandmother immigrated with my mother - only 4 years old - to the US via Mariel. To think that they would have been lumped in with this macabre attempt by Castro to slander all the Marielitos as criminals and “undesirables”, and - worse yet - that the world generally accepted this view and played right into Castro’s agenda stuns me. How was it not evident to the world what Castro was trying to do? How could the US not realize that, even as criminals were among those who left, Marielitos were statistically more likely to be a victim of a violent crime than perpetrators? The more I read of what Ojito wrote, the more I admired the extent to which she researched this subject and the more I found myself revolted by the treatment of the Marielitos. As Ojito describes, “refugees were pawns in a never-ending game of Cold War politics neither (Cuba or US) was able to win or willing to concede” (Ojito 264).
If you are a Cuban, no matter where you live or where your views lie, I recommend this memoir for its sentimentality and depth of personal and historical exploration into a key moment in modern Cuban history. For everyone else, I still recommend this memoir as a testament to the power which hope has in coping with circumstances beyond one’s control, such as the struggles of Ojito with adjusting to life in the US as an exile from her childhood “patria” (homeland), Cuba. We all can take away that, no matter what walk of life you come from, we all possess a common desire to pursue a better life in cooperation with each other, rather than in spite of each other. In my opinion, Mariel deserves to be remembered as one of the most important moments in US-Cuba relations, just as the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs Invasion are. Ojito's memoir, although more journalism than personal experience at some parts, serves as a comprehensive, gripping exploration of the Mariel boatlift.
From the Perspective of a Second Generation Cuban-American
To preface my review of Finding Mañana: A Memoir of a Cuban Exodus , I wish to highlight an excerpt from Cuban poet and independence leader Jose Martí’s “Versos Sencillos” (“Simple Verses”) and an excerpt from Finding Mañana that I feel fits the tone of Mirta Ojito’s touching memoir:
“Oigo un suspiro, a través
De la tierras y la mar,
Y no es un suspiro, – es
Que mi hijo va a despertar.
…
Odio la máscara y vicio
Del corredor de mi hotel:
Me vuelvo al manso bullicio
De mi monte de laurel.
Con los pobres de la tierra
Quiero yo mi suerte echar:
El arroyo de la sierra
Me complace más que el mar.”
“I hear a sigh that passes
over lands and seas,
and it is not a sign – it is my son, awakening from sleep.
…
I hate the masks and vices
of the hallways of my hotel;
I turn to the gentle noises
of my woods of laurel.
With the wretched of the earth
I want to cast my lot:
A stream flowing over mountains suits me better than the sea.”
Jose Martí, “Versos Sencillos” (“Simple Verses”) (fragments of Verses I - III).
“This is the last time I’ll see Cuba. Take it in. Take it all in… I should have brought a rock with me, a little water, a handful of dirt, I thought… I had entered the world of exile, a zone where one must always walk alone, at one’s own pace, and only after burying a part of one’s soul” (Ojito 220-221).
The excerpt from Martí’s work conveys sentiments which I believe essential to the Cuban spirit: Community as your greatest strength (“It is my son, awakening from sleep”), home as your strongest bastion (“I turn to the gentle noises of my woods of laurel”, and compassion as your greatest ability (“With the wretched of the earth / I want to cast my lot). The Cuba that Martí spoke of in his writing is one bonded by the mutual desire to live freely. Ojito’s memoir discusses how political ideology threatened this founding vision of Martí, detailing her experience living in Fidel Castro-controlled Cuba leading up to the 1980 Mariel boatlift, a mass exodus of Cubans - or “gusanos”, as Castro derided them - that saw 125,266 Cubans immigrate to the US in a flotilla of civilian ships, often organized by Cuban-Americans residing in Miami and Florida. Yet, this is not a well-known historical event, despite 1% of Cuba’s population of approximately 9.8 million people leaving Cuba at the time. Why aren’t its main actors known? What was it like to be a “Marielito” (as the Cubans who left Cuba through the port of Mariel in 1980 came to be known), and how does Ojito’s memoir powerfully invoke the memory of this important event in Cuban history?
Ojito provides a vivid account of her childhood life in Cuba, as if she were still living there. She describes the alienation she experienced in school from her teachers due to aspects of her upbringing deemed as “counter revolutionary”, such as her family’s religiosity and her reluctance to become a Pioneer of Communism (“pionera”), a youth organization created by Castro to teach Cuban youth about the Revolution. Ojito masterfully details incidents of the aforementioned “Cuban spirit” conflicting with the political ideology of Castro which controlled the nation. For instance, Ojito described a story of a mother that initially supported the revolution who, upon hearing that her son was drafted and sent to fight in the Angolan Civil War, “grabbed the picture [of a baseball-playing Castro in a place of honor on top of her television] and threw it out her living room window… Because she had once been the president of the neighborhood watchdog committee and because people understood her pain, no one reported her to the police. Her kind neighbors assumed the poor woman had gone crazy” (Ojito 67). Anecdotes like this provide a deeply personal perspective that contributes to understanding the motivation for the Mariel boatlift, and I believe affirm Martí’s vision of the “Cuban spirit” still being present among Cubans amidst the restrictive politics of Castro.
I also want to point out the wide breadth of historical actors that Ojito highlights that contributed to making the boatlift happen. For the purposes of this review, I will highlight what I found to be the most interesting of these actors: Héctor Sanyustiz, a bus driver who inadvertently kicks off a series of events leading to Mariel when he crashes a bus into the Peruvian embassy to seek refuge there and eventually immigrate from Cuba. The whole story of Sanyustiz laid out by Ojito demonstrates the desperation of some Cubans to escape the politically stifling atmosphere of Castro’s making. Although Sanyustiz’s actions were largely forgotten due to his exile being treated much like the thousands of other Marielitos by the Cuban government, Ojito highlights what I find to be the most tragic part of the Mariel boatlift: its historical legacy.
As a journalist, Ojito weaves immensely personal stories with historical events and personal opinions to create a comprehensive reevaluation of the Mariel boatlift. What I found to be the most startling aspect of this reevaluation is Ojito’s exposure of how Mariel was used as a political tool by both the US and Castro. Since Castro controlled who went in and who went out of Cuba, he would control the daily makeup of “undesirable” Cubans who left the island. Castro would frequently have a high percentage of criminals be allowed to leave along with “gusanos” who had relatives in the US. If Castro received too much criticism for the percentage of criminals, he would increase the percentage of relatives and lower the percentage of criminals for a few days, and then reverse the numbers. I was so shocked by this because my own grandmother immigrated with my mother - only 4 years old - to the US via Mariel. To think that they would have been lumped in with this macabre attempt by Castro to slander all the Marielitos as criminals and “undesirables”, and - worse yet - that the world generally accepted this view and played right into Castro’s agenda stuns me. How was it not evident to the world what Castro was trying to do? How could the US not realize that, even as criminals were among those who left, Marielitos were statistically more likely to be a victim of a violent crime than perpetrators? The more I read of what Ojito wrote, the more I admired the extent to which she researched this subject and the more I found myself revolted by the treatment of the Marielitos. As Ojito describes, “refugees were pawns in a never-ending game of Cold War politics neither (Cuba or US) was able to win or willing to concede” (Ojito 264).
If you are a Cuban, no matter where you live or where your views lie, I recommend this memoir for its sentimentality and depth of personal and historical exploration into a key moment in modern Cuban history. For everyone else, I still recommend this memoir as a testament to the power which hope has in coping with circumstances beyond one’s control, such as the struggles of Ojito with adjusting to life in the US as an exile from her childhood “patria” (homeland), Cuba. We all can take away that, no matter what walk of life you come from, we all possess a common desire to pursue a better life in cooperation with each other, rather than in spite of each other. In my opinion, Mariel deserves to be remembered as one of the most important moments in US-Cuba relations, just as the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs Invasion are. Ojito's memoir, although more journalism than personal experience at some parts, serves as a comprehensive, gripping exploration of the Mariel boatlift.
August 5, 2014
Mirta's story was fascinating and well-told, but her story didn't fill the entire book. Instead, the author filled the book with stories about historical events surrounding Cuban politics as well as other stories. I skipped these parts.
The first alternative chapters were stories told from political figure perspectives and I just couldn't get into them. They seemed distant, boring, and devoid of emotion to me; well written and valuable in their own right, but not what I was looking for after I read Mirta's chapters. Some other chapters, I believe, were told from ordinary citizens', like Mirta's, perspective and were likely quite interesting, but I was so engrossed in Mirta's story and her voice, wanting to find out what happened to her and if she was able to get to the U.S. that I skipped those chapters as well.
Parts of the book I did read, Mirta's story, were intriguing, tension-filled, and had me turning pages, anxious to see what happened. Most of it was told well from Mirta's perspective and were consistent. I greatly enjoyed Mirta's story, but because of having to flip pages to find where it picked back up, the pace was off and it reduced the ease of reading. I love the title and the dual of meaning of Manana meaning tomorrow in Spanish and it being the boat the author took to Florida.
The first alternative chapters were stories told from political figure perspectives and I just couldn't get into them. They seemed distant, boring, and devoid of emotion to me; well written and valuable in their own right, but not what I was looking for after I read Mirta's chapters. Some other chapters, I believe, were told from ordinary citizens', like Mirta's, perspective and were likely quite interesting, but I was so engrossed in Mirta's story and her voice, wanting to find out what happened to her and if she was able to get to the U.S. that I skipped those chapters as well.
Parts of the book I did read, Mirta's story, were intriguing, tension-filled, and had me turning pages, anxious to see what happened. Most of it was told well from Mirta's perspective and were consistent. I greatly enjoyed Mirta's story, but because of having to flip pages to find where it picked back up, the pace was off and it reduced the ease of reading. I love the title and the dual of meaning of Manana meaning tomorrow in Spanish and it being the boat the author took to Florida.
May 17, 2024
It was a good book it was informational and emotional at the same time by addressing what she went through there was a personal impact on historical events. Ojito’s showed a lot of emotions and imagery making the book good. However, a few parts of the story were a little boring I think mainly because some parts were hard to understand. But, I liked the way the author expressed her story I was able to envision what she had to go through and the hardships she endured while crossing
This memoir is a historical document but also a deeply personal exploration of identity. I liked the belonging, and the enduring hope for "mañana." It is a good-read for anyone interested in immigrant stories and cuban history. The story telling is very well told to the point where a reader can understand and can almost understand the story.
This memoir is a historical document but also a deeply personal exploration of identity. I liked the belonging, and the enduring hope for "mañana." It is a good-read for anyone interested in immigrant stories and cuban history. The story telling is very well told to the point where a reader can understand and can almost understand the story.
June 15, 2012
The story of the Marielitas by one of the thousands who came over, grew up, and became a journalist. Finding Mañana is the stories of people who were involved in the creation of the exodus from Cuba known as the Mariel boatlift. I found the journalistic style a bit dry, but I realize that as a journalist it was perhaps easiest to keep her distance and report the facts. It is a very comprehensive piece, outlining the key players who helped start the process all the way thru to where they were over 20 yrs later. A good way to grasp the entanglements on both the Cuban and American sides of this issue.
July 3, 2010
3.5 stars. Her writing is beautiful, and she does a fabulous job of drawing you in. I loved all the different perspectives of people involved in the Mariel situation. What turned me off was the ending--she waxes political and disparages all the arguments against uncontrolled immigration. If the people in Miami aren't okay with accepting every single Cuban who wants to leave Cuba, they must be racist. I'm all for immigration, but I'm also for order. Otherwise people will end up in terrible conditions like the ones in 'Tent City' where many of the Mariel refugees ended up.
A great read, if you can stomach the politics at the end.
A great read, if you can stomach the politics at the end.
August 15, 2009
An amazing story - the author, now a journalist in the U.S., left her home country of Cuba for good as part of the Mariel boat lift at the pivotal age of 16. Hard to imagine what that would be like.
Ojito mixes in other true stories she collected from participants in Mariel, both large and small. I found the chronology of the interwoven stories occasionally confusing / hard to dive into, but then again I don't know much about Cuban history. It certainly is an incredible history, and overall I was fascinated and enjoyed learning about it through the firsthand accounts in this book.
Ojito mixes in other true stories she collected from participants in Mariel, both large and small. I found the chronology of the interwoven stories occasionally confusing / hard to dive into, but then again I don't know much about Cuban history. It certainly is an incredible history, and overall I was fascinated and enjoyed learning about it through the firsthand accounts in this book.
January 30, 2013
This was required entry reading to my University, but I ended up loving it! The reason it was chosen (other than the author being a graduate of our school) was because the goal of my school is to broaden students' international horizons, and this was the perfect choice. Everyone knows that Castro is the Cuban dictator but only those who lived through it can know how he changed simple day to day life & tasks. This book will give you insight and greater appreciation for the life you have, regardless of circumstances.
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