Four Men: Living the Revolution: An Oral History of Contemporary Cuba

by Oscar Lewis, Ruth M Lewis, Susan M. Rigdon

Extended interviews with men, women, and families provide insight into the impact of the Cuban revolution on the island nation's urban slum dwellers, the roles of its women, and home life

Genres: History

538 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1977

About the author

Oscar Lewis was born in New York City in 1914, and grew up on a small farm in upstate New York. He received his PhD in anthropology from Columbia University in 1940, and taught at Brooklyn College and Washington University before helping to found the anthropology department at the University of Illinois, where he was a professor from 1948 until his death. From his first visit to Mexico in 1943, Mexican peasants and city dwellers were among his major interests. In addition to The Children of Sanchez, his other studies of Mexican life include Life in a Mexican Village, Five Families, Pedro Martinez, and A Death in the Sanchez Family. He is also the author of La Vida: A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty—San Juan and New York, which won the National Book Award, and Living the Revolution: An Oral History of Contemporary Cuba, with his wife, Ruth Maslow Lewis, and Susan M. Rigdon. Lewis also published widely in both academic journals and popular periodicals such as Harper’s Magazine. Some of his best-known articles were collected in Anthropological Essays (1970). The recipient of many distinguished grants and fellowships, including two Guggenheims, Lewis was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He died in 1970.

Reviews

[Julio The Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

"What did you do in the Revolution, Daddy?" Fidel Castro met Oscar Lewis, the legendary dean of American sociologists, just after the Cuban Revolution of 1959 and told him he had read Oscar's masterpiece on the urban poor of Mexico City, THE CHILDREN OF SANCHEZ: "It's worth ten thousand copies of THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO" Fidel told him. "Why don't you come to Cuba and see how the urban poor are transformed by revolution?". Oscar took the bait and the result was FOUR MEN; four stories of life under Batista and later Castro, set in Havana. All stories are told in the first person, using pseudonyms to protect the interview subjects. One is a slum dweller who gradually catches on that life cannot and will not continue the same for those who live in shanties. Another is younger and more political, dedicating himself to the pro-Castro urban underground. None are serving socialism or Fidel himself but all celebrate the opening of a new door in their lives. If the Cuban Revolution has stood the test of time, over sixty years, it is because of men like these.

[Tracy Towley · Rating 4 out of 5]

For the first few hundreds pages of this book, I was completely in love. Having read dozens of books on Cuban history, this seemed to be the perfect book for my taste. Very detailed, very comprehensive stories from people who'd lived through the revolution first hand. However, as it went on, I began to have some issues.

Four Men Living the Revolution: An Oral History of Contemporary Cuba is taken from thousands of pages of transcripts. Each of the four sections follows the life of one man, from birth through their experience in Castro's Cuba. While it was chock full of exactly the kind of day to day details I find so fascinating, I also felt that it focused on basically one viewpoint. The men interviewed has remarkably similar backgrounds and opinions on the revolution. While some were definitely more supportive of the revolution than others, all of them had basically the same thing to say. I did really enjoy this book but by the 4th retelling of essentially the same story, I found myself wishing they'd covered another viewpoint.