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A Little Piece of Cuba: A Journey to Become Cubana-Americana
For fans of Chanel Cleeton’s Next Year in Havana, a real-life story of how a young woman’s five-day trip to Cuba, her mother’s birthplace, completely changed her view of herself as a second-generation American.
When Barbara Caver was growing up in South Carolina, her Cuban roots were as mysterious as the embargoed island her mother had been born on but left in 1959. For Barbara, Cuba represented a heritage that she’d never understood and couldn’t fully embrace. When she moved from South Carolina to New York, the vibrant diversity of the city and new friendships with other Cuban Americans made her curious about her mother’s home country. Finally, in 2017, she traveled to Cuba.
Immediately upon arriving in Havana, Barbara was struck by a sense of the tiles on a backsplash looked like tiles in her grandparents’ home, the airport smelled like a childhood memory, local dishes tasted like her grandmother’s cooking, and a morning stroll through Vedado delivered her to the front gate of her great-grandmother’s home—despite the fact that she didn’t have the address. She wasn’t just visiting a foreign country; she was being welcomed home.
Part travel adventure, part ghost story, and part memoir, A Little Piece of A Journey To Become Cubana-Americanais an imaginative and humorous personal journey through Barbara’s memories and experiences as she discovers that she is and has always been more Cuban than she thought.
When Barbara Caver was growing up in South Carolina, her Cuban roots were as mysterious as the embargoed island her mother had been born on but left in 1959. For Barbara, Cuba represented a heritage that she’d never understood and couldn’t fully embrace. When she moved from South Carolina to New York, the vibrant diversity of the city and new friendships with other Cuban Americans made her curious about her mother’s home country. Finally, in 2017, she traveled to Cuba.
Immediately upon arriving in Havana, Barbara was struck by a sense of the tiles on a backsplash looked like tiles in her grandparents’ home, the airport smelled like a childhood memory, local dishes tasted like her grandmother’s cooking, and a morning stroll through Vedado delivered her to the front gate of her great-grandmother’s home—despite the fact that she didn’t have the address. She wasn’t just visiting a foreign country; she was being welcomed home.
Part travel adventure, part ghost story, and part memoir, A Little Piece of A Journey To Become Cubana-Americanais an imaginative and humorous personal journey through Barbara’s memories and experiences as she discovers that she is and has always been more Cuban than she thought.
- GenresMemoirTravelNonfiction
160 pages, Paperback
Published December 2, 2025
2 people are currently reading
44 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
November 29, 2025
A good read, if a little repetitive (especially considering its short length). I sympathised with Caver for her feelings of being kind of sheltered from her mother's cultural heritage as a child, but I enjoyed her journey as an adult to rectify the situation. Even though she went over it again and again, I still couldn't see the problem with her birth name of Carmelina...
With thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an eARC to read and review.
With thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an eARC to read and review.
January 3, 2026
Cool read! Very relatable to me as someone who is Cuban but doesn’t usually “feel very Cuban”, and it made me want to pursue my heritage more. A semi distant cousin of mine wrote this, so it was cool to learn about our shared family history, and hear her talk about family members that we share and that I do know. At one point she mentioned Tia Carmelina going to Augusta, GA for her cousins wedding and that was my parents’ wedding!! Shoutout.
August 2, 2025
I read this while traveling and thought it was an inspiring way to think about the intersection between cultural identity, family, and language. We learn through Caver's journey about the importance of history and healing in Cuba. The descriptions of food and buildings felt nostalgic and made me feel like I was dusting off someone's diary and reading a narrative of their entries.
October 26, 2025
Ostensibly a travel memoir, this book is actually a collection of Caver's reflections and recollections about what it means to be a half-Cuban daughter raised in the American South with a ruptured connection to Cuba. I received a complimentary this book (thanks to NetGalley and the publishing house) in exchange for an honest review. I was attracted to the book as my husband is Cuban and was reared in Havana until the age of seven--we have returned to Cuba multiple times, and we both have read most of the books about Cubans' return visits to their homeland. Unfortunately, this book is not among the more memorable or captivating of this genre. While the discussions of what it means to be searching for an identity as a hyphenated 2nd generation American ring true (based on my own experiences as a daughter to an immigrant French mother and American father) and are interesting, the observations made on the return trip to Cuba are more pedestrian. Other books about returns to Cuba offer more compelling and evocative descriptions and better historical contextualization. The story arc is also a bit disjointed, as the book moves around in time in a random fashion. I think this book would have worked better as a collection of essays. I got halfway through the book and ended up putting it aside, unfortunately. Perhaps it will be more engaging for someone who has no connection to Cuba and who is not themselves the product of a marriage between an immigrant and an American. For that reader, the observations may seem more revealing and novel.
December 23, 2025
3.9
Self-discovery later in life (Havana, Cuba; 2017): Barbara Caver has been questioning her identity all her life. At least, from her mid-forties to her kindergarten days.
Which makes A Little Piece of Cuba: A Journey to Become Cubana-Americana an emotional human interest and cultural story, not a historical or sociological one. And yet, those pieces are woven into this compact (under 150 pages), engaging memoir. Much read between-the-lines since Caver sensed she was “different” but no one told her why. Or why it was “important not to be different.”
So why, she simply asks, was she given the name Carmelina Barbara and not Barbara Carmelina? Complicated, it turns out.
You might not think questioning her name could take on such a profound sense of not belonging. An unsettling, lingering Between-and-Betwixt state of limbo Caver struggled to put her finger on. An emotional ache that haunted her, beginning with the discomfort of introducing herself to her new teacher and classmates with a name that didn’t sound American or roll off the tip of a young tongue.
Raised in the Deep South, in South Carolina, Caver says she had “no clue what it meant to be Cuban.” English the only language spoken at home despite her mother Carmen’s Cuban roots. Nor a traditional Cuban dish served. “Food was my favorite way of exploring new cultures and meeting new people,” writes Caver who loves to travel.
Why, she also asked, recalling her childhood confusion, was it “so bad to be different”?
Complex questions to explain to a child. But they raise more questions as to why there wasn’t ever a good time to open a conversation aimed at sharing, absorbing, blending her parents’ two cultures? Echoes of an adoptee’s angst of not knowing who their parents and ancestors were, bewildering feelings of loss come to mind. What the National Council for Adoption refers to as the “missing puzzle piece.”
The more you read, the more meaningful Piece in the book’s title becomes. For instance, why not fill in and connect the dots of the missing piece of Caver’s identity before (or after) visiting her maternal grandmother Carmelina’s house in Louisiana, when she was exposed and treated to the delicious smells and tastes of Cuban cuisine? Can it all be chalked up to the age her mother came to America? Seven, not much older than her searching-for-answers daughter. What else might have been going on?
Moving to New York City, one of the most diverse cities in the country and world, triggered something floating around in Caver’s soul. Creatively, she evokes the wonder of her awakening through a composite of characters she encounters she calls Sara the Real Cuban. Sara is the “angelic force” who “embodied the spirit of Cuba,” which led to Caver’s journey at age thirty-seven to Havana, Cuba in 2017 with her heartwarmingly supportive and equally enthusiastic husband Todd. Would she have ventured alone to a place the U.S. has regarded as “forbidden” for so long?
Two historical timeframes to point out. The first 1959, the year Caver’s grandmother Carmelina and her grandfather Carlos fled to America with their five children. That’s when Fidel Castro’s Communist regime overthrew the Republic of Cuba, a progressive Latin American country at the time. They were among the first wave of Cubans to immigrate to America because of their well-to-do status, which is why their migration is referred to as the “Golden Exiles.”
Couldn’t have been golden in the eyes of Cubans who made the painful decision to leave nearly everything behind (not their devout Catholic religion), including abandoning their “graceful and exotic” house“ near Old Havana (much of the area became protected when named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982). Located in the Vedado neighborhood, once considered the jewel of the Caribbean.
Caver and Todd found no signs of her grandparents’ Havana home ever existing when they went looking for it in 2017. Another historical year in Cuban history as the timeframe was during the tail end of the opening of travel restrictions under President Obama. Which means they made their transformative trip before the Trump administration closed it off again in June of that same year.
You might also not think that five-days in an unknown country would have such a powerful and enduring effect on Caver’s coming to terms and embracing her identity, but the little pieces of Cuba she took to heart seem to have made a big difference.
Especially compared to “weeping in a corner” someplace in New York City, where the “constant work-hard-play-hard dance frequently overwhelms me” and led to her “questioning her life choices.” Describing herself as a “lifelong student of the arts” and an “accomplished film and television production executive” in the About the Author page, today sipping her first cup of coffee she still feels “the heat of the sun in Havana” and the robust taste of Cuban coffee. Presumably no longer questioning the value of her accomplishments.
Written in memories that feel journal-esque in their depictions. Intensified by the recent and continued exuberance of finding and connecting with the missing piece, we’re shown an uplifting path forward.
Scholars would have a field day teasing apart the interconnected concepts authentically explored. While they focus on fancy terms like self-actualization based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, and assimilation versus acculturation approaches for outsiders to integrate into a new society, Caver’s catchy, intimate voice resonates.
Caver has a way with words that hooks us from the start of her cultural immersion into a country most of us have never visited. “I boarded a plane in New York City in 2017 and three hours later, I walked into an airport hangar in Havana in 1961.” Later, she uses the “frozen in time” expression we’ve heard expressed about Cuba post-Castro.
Cuba may not be the poorest country in the world, but it’s ranked as the “second-poorest country in the New World” according to the Center for a Secure Free Society or near the bottom. Caver sees the “deprivation” wherever she and Todd go, but her journey was personal. “One of the most striking things of being in Cuba was how it felt like the best things in life – music, food, art, culture, dance – appeared exactly when we needed them.”
Over half of Cuban-Americans make their home in Little Havana, Miami, the “beating heart of Cuban-American culture”; more elsewhere in Florida. So we can appreciate the challenges of Caver’s bicultural family adapting healthily to their new culture in another part of America outside other diverse places like New York/New Jersey and Texas. It should go without saying, though worth repeating, that far greater acceptance and freedom of America’s diversity elsewhere would benefit communities and people of all ages.
Or, as Caver eloquently says: “The space to be me.”
Self-discovery later in life (Havana, Cuba; 2017): Barbara Caver has been questioning her identity all her life. At least, from her mid-forties to her kindergarten days.
Which makes A Little Piece of Cuba: A Journey to Become Cubana-Americana an emotional human interest and cultural story, not a historical or sociological one. And yet, those pieces are woven into this compact (under 150 pages), engaging memoir. Much read between-the-lines since Caver sensed she was “different” but no one told her why. Or why it was “important not to be different.”
So why, she simply asks, was she given the name Carmelina Barbara and not Barbara Carmelina? Complicated, it turns out.
You might not think questioning her name could take on such a profound sense of not belonging. An unsettling, lingering Between-and-Betwixt state of limbo Caver struggled to put her finger on. An emotional ache that haunted her, beginning with the discomfort of introducing herself to her new teacher and classmates with a name that didn’t sound American or roll off the tip of a young tongue.
Raised in the Deep South, in South Carolina, Caver says she had “no clue what it meant to be Cuban.” English the only language spoken at home despite her mother Carmen’s Cuban roots. Nor a traditional Cuban dish served. “Food was my favorite way of exploring new cultures and meeting new people,” writes Caver who loves to travel.
Why, she also asked, recalling her childhood confusion, was it “so bad to be different”?
Complex questions to explain to a child. But they raise more questions as to why there wasn’t ever a good time to open a conversation aimed at sharing, absorbing, blending her parents’ two cultures? Echoes of an adoptee’s angst of not knowing who their parents and ancestors were, bewildering feelings of loss come to mind. What the National Council for Adoption refers to as the “missing puzzle piece.”
The more you read, the more meaningful Piece in the book’s title becomes. For instance, why not fill in and connect the dots of the missing piece of Caver’s identity before (or after) visiting her maternal grandmother Carmelina’s house in Louisiana, when she was exposed and treated to the delicious smells and tastes of Cuban cuisine? Can it all be chalked up to the age her mother came to America? Seven, not much older than her searching-for-answers daughter. What else might have been going on?
Moving to New York City, one of the most diverse cities in the country and world, triggered something floating around in Caver’s soul. Creatively, she evokes the wonder of her awakening through a composite of characters she encounters she calls Sara the Real Cuban. Sara is the “angelic force” who “embodied the spirit of Cuba,” which led to Caver’s journey at age thirty-seven to Havana, Cuba in 2017 with her heartwarmingly supportive and equally enthusiastic husband Todd. Would she have ventured alone to a place the U.S. has regarded as “forbidden” for so long?
Two historical timeframes to point out. The first 1959, the year Caver’s grandmother Carmelina and her grandfather Carlos fled to America with their five children. That’s when Fidel Castro’s Communist regime overthrew the Republic of Cuba, a progressive Latin American country at the time. They were among the first wave of Cubans to immigrate to America because of their well-to-do status, which is why their migration is referred to as the “Golden Exiles.”
Couldn’t have been golden in the eyes of Cubans who made the painful decision to leave nearly everything behind (not their devout Catholic religion), including abandoning their “graceful and exotic” house“ near Old Havana (much of the area became protected when named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982). Located in the Vedado neighborhood, once considered the jewel of the Caribbean.
Caver and Todd found no signs of her grandparents’ Havana home ever existing when they went looking for it in 2017. Another historical year in Cuban history as the timeframe was during the tail end of the opening of travel restrictions under President Obama. Which means they made their transformative trip before the Trump administration closed it off again in June of that same year.
You might also not think that five-days in an unknown country would have such a powerful and enduring effect on Caver’s coming to terms and embracing her identity, but the little pieces of Cuba she took to heart seem to have made a big difference.
Especially compared to “weeping in a corner” someplace in New York City, where the “constant work-hard-play-hard dance frequently overwhelms me” and led to her “questioning her life choices.” Describing herself as a “lifelong student of the arts” and an “accomplished film and television production executive” in the About the Author page, today sipping her first cup of coffee she still feels “the heat of the sun in Havana” and the robust taste of Cuban coffee. Presumably no longer questioning the value of her accomplishments.
Written in memories that feel journal-esque in their depictions. Intensified by the recent and continued exuberance of finding and connecting with the missing piece, we’re shown an uplifting path forward.
Scholars would have a field day teasing apart the interconnected concepts authentically explored. While they focus on fancy terms like self-actualization based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, and assimilation versus acculturation approaches for outsiders to integrate into a new society, Caver’s catchy, intimate voice resonates.
Caver has a way with words that hooks us from the start of her cultural immersion into a country most of us have never visited. “I boarded a plane in New York City in 2017 and three hours later, I walked into an airport hangar in Havana in 1961.” Later, she uses the “frozen in time” expression we’ve heard expressed about Cuba post-Castro.
Cuba may not be the poorest country in the world, but it’s ranked as the “second-poorest country in the New World” according to the Center for a Secure Free Society or near the bottom. Caver sees the “deprivation” wherever she and Todd go, but her journey was personal. “One of the most striking things of being in Cuba was how it felt like the best things in life – music, food, art, culture, dance – appeared exactly when we needed them.”
Over half of Cuban-Americans make their home in Little Havana, Miami, the “beating heart of Cuban-American culture”; more elsewhere in Florida. So we can appreciate the challenges of Caver’s bicultural family adapting healthily to their new culture in another part of America outside other diverse places like New York/New Jersey and Texas. It should go without saying, though worth repeating, that far greater acceptance and freedom of America’s diversity elsewhere would benefit communities and people of all ages.
Or, as Caver eloquently says: “The space to be me.”
July 23, 2025
This book was right up my alley - I love reading about the nuances and complexities of cultural identity.
"A Little Piece of Cuba" is a memoir about Barbara, a second-generation Cuban American who has struggled with what that label truly means and what her Cuban heritage means to her. Even though her mother was born in Cuba, she fled the country after Castro's rise to power when she was just 7 years old. As a result, her mom has a complicated relationship with Cuba, rarely speaks Spanish, and prefers not to discuss or dwell on the past.
Understandably, Barbara grows up with a lot of curiosity about Cuba, but not many answers. The book delves into her journey as a 30-something adult finally traveling to Cuba for the first time. She gets to experience the country as it is now, and discover what it must've been like for her family back then.
I’ve personally struggled with cultural identity and with questions around what it means to be Hispanic, especially the feeling of not being “authentic” enough. I really appreciated reading about Barbara’s exploration of her heritage, food, and traditions, and how she ultimately redefined what Cuban identity means to her through this journey.
I also learned a lot about Cuba's history and culture I wasn't familiar with. Her description of the streets, the people, and the ambience made me feel like I was traveling alongside her to Cuba.
Thank you NetGalley for the eARC.
"A Little Piece of Cuba" is a memoir about Barbara, a second-generation Cuban American who has struggled with what that label truly means and what her Cuban heritage means to her. Even though her mother was born in Cuba, she fled the country after Castro's rise to power when she was just 7 years old. As a result, her mom has a complicated relationship with Cuba, rarely speaks Spanish, and prefers not to discuss or dwell on the past.
Understandably, Barbara grows up with a lot of curiosity about Cuba, but not many answers. The book delves into her journey as a 30-something adult finally traveling to Cuba for the first time. She gets to experience the country as it is now, and discover what it must've been like for her family back then.
I’ve personally struggled with cultural identity and with questions around what it means to be Hispanic, especially the feeling of not being “authentic” enough. I really appreciated reading about Barbara’s exploration of her heritage, food, and traditions, and how she ultimately redefined what Cuban identity means to her through this journey.
I also learned a lot about Cuba's history and culture I wasn't familiar with. Her description of the streets, the people, and the ambience made me feel like I was traveling alongside her to Cuba.
Thank you NetGalley for the eARC.
November 23, 2025
Thank you to NetGalley for the eARC! My first one ever.
I picked this book up because Barbara and I share a very similar story - growing up in the United States with one hispanic immigrant parent and one white American parent; not speaking Spanish, not looking obviously hispanic, but having one of our names (her first name, my last name) that confuses a lot of Americans. And the way she struggled with even calling herself Cuban-American is the same struggle I have calling myself Colombian-American. The book started out strong as Barbara related her lifelong feelings of not being "Cuban enough."
I also appreciated the chapter where she talked more about her mother being forced into a new life in the US at 7 years old and how that relates to maybe why her mother didn't teach her Spanish. Being an immigrant and having to "overcome" your differences to fit into American society could definitely influence the way you raise your American-born child, even if it means holding your culture back from them. I do wish though that she would have directly asked more of her family members about their Cuban identities and experiences growing up as immigrants. It did not seem to me like she asked even her mom any direct questions about it while writing this book. She grew up with her mom not being very direct in her responses to questions about Cuba, so maybe she figured she wouldn't get anymore answers today while writing the book either. And I get it - my dad isn't very forthcoming when I ask him about Colombia either, but still, I think if I was writing a whole memoir about this I'd make a more serious effort to interview him and my other Colombian family members.
And that leads me to why, overall, this book disappointed me. It felt extremely surface level in the exploration of all its themes, except for Barbara's personal journey to become Cubana-Americana. There was no discussion of the history of Cuba, from before settler-colonialism to after. It's like all her ideas about Cuba just came from what she heard from family members or saw on social media and she never looked into it any further. Barbara's Cuban family was clearly very wealthy, as they were exiled during Castro's revolution, but there is hardly any direct discussion about their wealth and privilege. How could that huge historical event that had such an impact on your family not make you curious? How could you not want to explore the relationship between history, economics, and politics when your cultural identities and your very life are at the center of that influence? I was enjoying the book but the whole time I was reading it I was waiting for a discussion of these things, especially any commentary on the U.S.-Cuba relationship.
Barbara directly shies away from these topics in the book:
"And history—in the form of a revolution on an island in the middle of an ocean twenty years before I was born—smacked into me like a freight train. The events of the past impacted how I learned to relate to a heritage that had eluded me. There was a full moon over the Malecón on the night that I decided I needed to let history be. I gave up trying to answer the questions posed by history, and I sent a rueful “good luck” towards the historians and future inhabitants of this world who would attempt to tackle that task. I boarded the JetBlue flight back to New York City’s JFK airport (JFK . . . ah yeah, he had a role in this whole mess too, didn’t he?), and I threw all of my questions into Havana’s deep harbor to sink except for one: what can I do, now that I know what I know?"
Later in the same chapter where she decides to not pursue her deeper questions about Cuba, she says this:
"There always seems to be more to read or another perspective to understand, both politically and emotionally, so I have started. Little by little, I step into the community. I tell people that I am Cuban American, and I try to read everything I can and listen to anyone who wants to share their experiences with me. I am trying to connect with Cuba wherever I can find it."
But there is no evidence of that in this memoir.
Overall, this was a pretty shallow memoir without a deeper exploration of Cuba itself, and the intersection of race, history, class, and politics. That's why I'm giving it two stars. I really related to parts of it as I said, and I appreciate it for that, but I am left wanting more. She also repeated a lot of the same phrases too many times throughout the book, and structuring it as reflections and recounting her past as she was exploring Cuba for a couple of days in 2017 didn't work for me either. It jumped around too much when I wanted a larger, more streamlined sense of what her Cuban family's life was like and her own timeline. Another reviewer on here said that it would have worked better if it was a series of essays and I agree with that.
I picked this book up because Barbara and I share a very similar story - growing up in the United States with one hispanic immigrant parent and one white American parent; not speaking Spanish, not looking obviously hispanic, but having one of our names (her first name, my last name) that confuses a lot of Americans. And the way she struggled with even calling herself Cuban-American is the same struggle I have calling myself Colombian-American. The book started out strong as Barbara related her lifelong feelings of not being "Cuban enough."
I also appreciated the chapter where she talked more about her mother being forced into a new life in the US at 7 years old and how that relates to maybe why her mother didn't teach her Spanish. Being an immigrant and having to "overcome" your differences to fit into American society could definitely influence the way you raise your American-born child, even if it means holding your culture back from them. I do wish though that she would have directly asked more of her family members about their Cuban identities and experiences growing up as immigrants. It did not seem to me like she asked even her mom any direct questions about it while writing this book. She grew up with her mom not being very direct in her responses to questions about Cuba, so maybe she figured she wouldn't get anymore answers today while writing the book either. And I get it - my dad isn't very forthcoming when I ask him about Colombia either, but still, I think if I was writing a whole memoir about this I'd make a more serious effort to interview him and my other Colombian family members.
And that leads me to why, overall, this book disappointed me. It felt extremely surface level in the exploration of all its themes, except for Barbara's personal journey to become Cubana-Americana. There was no discussion of the history of Cuba, from before settler-colonialism to after. It's like all her ideas about Cuba just came from what she heard from family members or saw on social media and she never looked into it any further. Barbara's Cuban family was clearly very wealthy, as they were exiled during Castro's revolution, but there is hardly any direct discussion about their wealth and privilege. How could that huge historical event that had such an impact on your family not make you curious? How could you not want to explore the relationship between history, economics, and politics when your cultural identities and your very life are at the center of that influence? I was enjoying the book but the whole time I was reading it I was waiting for a discussion of these things, especially any commentary on the U.S.-Cuba relationship.
Barbara directly shies away from these topics in the book:
"And history—in the form of a revolution on an island in the middle of an ocean twenty years before I was born—smacked into me like a freight train. The events of the past impacted how I learned to relate to a heritage that had eluded me. There was a full moon over the Malecón on the night that I decided I needed to let history be. I gave up trying to answer the questions posed by history, and I sent a rueful “good luck” towards the historians and future inhabitants of this world who would attempt to tackle that task. I boarded the JetBlue flight back to New York City’s JFK airport (JFK . . . ah yeah, he had a role in this whole mess too, didn’t he?), and I threw all of my questions into Havana’s deep harbor to sink except for one: what can I do, now that I know what I know?"
Later in the same chapter where she decides to not pursue her deeper questions about Cuba, she says this:
"There always seems to be more to read or another perspective to understand, both politically and emotionally, so I have started. Little by little, I step into the community. I tell people that I am Cuban American, and I try to read everything I can and listen to anyone who wants to share their experiences with me. I am trying to connect with Cuba wherever I can find it."
But there is no evidence of that in this memoir.
Overall, this was a pretty shallow memoir without a deeper exploration of Cuba itself, and the intersection of race, history, class, and politics. That's why I'm giving it two stars. I really related to parts of it as I said, and I appreciate it for that, but I am left wanting more. She also repeated a lot of the same phrases too many times throughout the book, and structuring it as reflections and recounting her past as she was exploring Cuba for a couple of days in 2017 didn't work for me either. It jumped around too much when I wanted a larger, more streamlined sense of what her Cuban family's life was like and her own timeline. Another reviewer on here said that it would have worked better if it was a series of essays and I agree with that.
December 23, 2025
What a wonderful, compelling memoir by Barbara Caver. ‘A Little Piece of Cuba’ travels through history as Barbara recounts the stories of her mother and grandparents lives pre and post immigrating from Cuba, her own experiences growing up in the US as a second generation Cuban American, and how she came to realize that, despite the disconnect she often felt growing up, her Cuban heritage had always been around and within her! Not only was it interesting hearing these stories and learning more about Cuba’s history and culture, this memoir was FUNNY. Barbara has a true, distinct voice that almost feels as if you’re reading her personal diary, or listening to her while she reads to you at story time. There were many times in this book where I was giggling to myself or outright laughing at her clever anecdotes. Reading this memoir, I both felt a lot, and learned a lot. I highly highly highly recommend you adding this to your shelf!
January 7, 2026
“But if Fidel Castro’s revolution had not happened, then I never would have been born.”
Let that sink in as you follow Barbara along her little journey to find big answers.
Barbara’s writing is immersive; she feeds you Cuban food and culture throughout her story, pulling you right into a Havana her family never talked about, yet carried with them in quiet, everyday ways. Growing up in the U.S., she didn’t think she was “living” her Cuban identity; she thought she was simply living her life. This book captures that moment of recognition beautifully: that she had been embodying her heritage all along. It’s a story about belonging, memory, and the way identity shows up whether or not we’re paying attention.
Let that sink in as you follow Barbara along her little journey to find big answers.
Barbara’s writing is immersive; she feeds you Cuban food and culture throughout her story, pulling you right into a Havana her family never talked about, yet carried with them in quiet, everyday ways. Growing up in the U.S., she didn’t think she was “living” her Cuban identity; she thought she was simply living her life. This book captures that moment of recognition beautifully: that she had been embodying her heritage all along. It’s a story about belonging, memory, and the way identity shows up whether or not we’re paying attention.
January 5, 2026
A Little Piece of Cuba is, in the author’s own words, a “non-fiction odyssey”. It is a collection of humorous, entertaining, and intimate stories of a woman reflecting on her own culture identity as a Cuban American. The play of words are clever. Reading this book of self-reflection has made me curious on potentially exploring, and hopefully one day, embracing my own nuanced cultural identity. Some cultural and brands references in the book are relatively US-centric, and an international reader like myself needed to search up or deduce from the sentence what it meant. Overall, I enjoyed this good and light book.
September 29, 2025
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
This was so lovely. I didn't know much about Cuban history before now, and I loved learning about it. The author was so open and honest about her thoughts and experiences, and it was so interesting to hear her thoughts on everything from food to religion. If you read this, you will most likely learn something new, or at least gain an appreciation for yourself and the people around you in a fresh, new way that you might not have before. An easy five star.
This was so lovely. I didn't know much about Cuban history before now, and I loved learning about it. The author was so open and honest about her thoughts and experiences, and it was so interesting to hear her thoughts on everything from food to religion. If you read this, you will most likely learn something new, or at least gain an appreciation for yourself and the people around you in a fresh, new way that you might not have before. An easy five star.
October 23, 2025
This was a heartwarming memoir by Barbara Caver, who is half Cuban. In A Little Piece of Cuba, Caver writes about grappling with cultural identity, family history, exile from and travel to an ancestral land.
I enjoyed the glimpses into Cuban culture, the details of her first trip to Cuba in 2017, and how exile affected her mother's family. It was an easy read and I can see it appealing to people who like travel memoirs or exploring cultural identity and heritage.
Thank you to NetGalley and She Writes Press for the ARC.
I enjoyed the glimpses into Cuban culture, the details of her first trip to Cuba in 2017, and how exile affected her mother's family. It was an easy read and I can see it appealing to people who like travel memoirs or exploring cultural identity and heritage.
Thank you to NetGalley and She Writes Press for the ARC.
October 13, 2025
I really enjoyed this book especially because I have traveled to Cuba myself. Barbara (Carmelina) captured the magic of Havana streets so well - I truly felt like I was back there. The way she described her ancestors, particularly her grandmother's cooking, i could almost taste the bread and the picadillo. The book was very vulnerable, yet described the strength of the women in the family in such an an amazing way.
July 19, 2025
What a beautiful story! Barbara Caver takes us on her journey of discovering her Cuban roots in a way that makes you feel like you are right there with her, whether that's on her grandparents farm in Louisiana or in the middle of Havana. A Little Piece of Cuba is well worth the read.
Thank you Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for the ARC.
Thank you Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for the ARC.
August 9, 2025
Looking for your heritage when you don't have real connections to your homeland isn't easy. And if this homeland is Cuba it wasn't easy to go and see for yourself where you come from, where your grandparents lived. I guess a lot of people are on the same journey. By looking for your identity, heritage might play an important role.
August 21, 2025
This book made me travel back to Cuba. It was a beautiful story of how the author tried to find cultural identity which I relate a lot but in a different way.
The writing was repetitive and sometimes lacking structure, but except that I liked the book and enjoy reading it under the sun.
The writing was repetitive and sometimes lacking structure, but except that I liked the book and enjoy reading it under the sun.
December 20, 2025
The memoir started strong with interesting information and voice, but the switch back in time didn’t always work. By the middle of the book, there was a lot of repetition. By the 75% mark, I was no longer interested, as there were no other insightful revelations.
December 1, 2025
In another life, Caver might have grown up in Caribbean luxury: Her mother's family hailed from Cuba, where they had led privileged lives. As Castro came to power, though, they quietly relocated north, settling into a comfortable life in the US and—for most of them—never returning. And so Caver grew up knowing her roots but struggling to understand what they meant for her identity. What made one a "real" Cuban or a "real" Cuban American?
My mother's story is one of assimilation, whereas mine is one of differentiation. (loc. 1570*)
I enjoy both a family memoir and a travel memoir, so this was a good fit for me. There's not quite so much travel as I expected—just five days in a country, I guess, can't really compare to a whole life of experiences. I wasn't really sure how to feel about "Sara the real Cuban" (a character who is an amalgamation of people in Caver's life who helped her figure out what it meant to be Cuban American), as I suppose that the takeaways are more important to the story than introducing numerous characters who just pop in and out, but at the same time I would have liked the richness of detail that introducing those characters might have allowed.
My grasp of Cuban, and Cuban American, history is admittedly shaky: I learned a little bit about Cuba in school, of course, but mostly what remains are vague memories of the Elián González case and a history lesson or two about the Cuban missile crisis. If your grasp of history is similarly shaky, you might find it useful to brush up before diving into A Little Piece of Cuba, as there's some history here but the emphasis is very much on the way in which Caver's family background affected her, not on what has happened in the country. Fascinating to think, though, about the different reactions to immigration and refugees over time. While I'd never say that someone who had to flee their homeland was lucky, within the context of that flight, Caver's family was in a good position—coming with, it sounds like, established financial stability; part of a population that the US government welcomed into the country. (Considering that the current US government only seems enthusiastic about accepting white South Africans into the country...well, it was definitely a different time.)
*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.
Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.
My mother's story is one of assimilation, whereas mine is one of differentiation. (loc. 1570*)
I enjoy both a family memoir and a travel memoir, so this was a good fit for me. There's not quite so much travel as I expected—just five days in a country, I guess, can't really compare to a whole life of experiences. I wasn't really sure how to feel about "Sara the real Cuban" (a character who is an amalgamation of people in Caver's life who helped her figure out what it meant to be Cuban American), as I suppose that the takeaways are more important to the story than introducing numerous characters who just pop in and out, but at the same time I would have liked the richness of detail that introducing those characters might have allowed.
My grasp of Cuban, and Cuban American, history is admittedly shaky: I learned a little bit about Cuba in school, of course, but mostly what remains are vague memories of the Elián González case and a history lesson or two about the Cuban missile crisis. If your grasp of history is similarly shaky, you might find it useful to brush up before diving into A Little Piece of Cuba, as there's some history here but the emphasis is very much on the way in which Caver's family background affected her, not on what has happened in the country. Fascinating to think, though, about the different reactions to immigration and refugees over time. While I'd never say that someone who had to flee their homeland was lucky, within the context of that flight, Caver's family was in a good position—coming with, it sounds like, established financial stability; part of a population that the US government welcomed into the country. (Considering that the current US government only seems enthusiastic about accepting white South Africans into the country...well, it was definitely a different time.)
*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.
Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.
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