Property of the Revolution: One Cuban Refugee's Story of Loss, Legacy, and the Power of Intergenerational Storytelling | Ana Flaster

0:00 Welcome to the Human Experience, a podcast about the stories we live out every day and the importance of championing the vulnerability and courage of the storyteller. I'm your host, Jennifer Peterkin, and it was through my own lived story of experiencing domestic violence that this podcast was created. By traveling the globe and interviewing each guest in person, I am convinced now more than ever, that stories have the power to change the world. Thank you for being here. In a world full of noise, to listen with intention is an act of resistance. Anna, thank you so much for meeting with me in New Hampshire. I had to remember where I was real quick.

0:43 You're in New Hampshire. Concord, the capital. Yes. I'm excited to do some exploring this weekend while I'm here. Walking street is where you want to start. Okay. Yeah. I need all the recommendations. Yeah. I don't know the town well, but I know it's a lovely town. Great. I love walking on that street. It feels like old New England in a lot of ways. Nice. Even some of the parking. Is that diagonal parking against the sidewalk? Yeah. Perfect. So I haven't been north of New York. Wow. I know. All right, well, you're right up there, close to Canada now. I'm excited. Now, I. I. And I purposely put this trip off till the fall because I was like, I need to be in New England in the fall. Just feels like the vibe, so. Yeah, yeah, it's. The leaves haven't turned yet, but there are hints of that happening. I'm very excited. The summ is long.

1:36 Yeah. For me, I am a fall person through and through, so I'm looking forward to it. Good. Well, if you travel a bit farther north, you'll see some. Okay. All right. Good to know you are from this area. Well, that's not true. But you've lived in this area for quite a while, correct? Yes, I have. When we fled Cuba, we were in Miami briefly at a refugee processing center in 1967, then briefly with my aunt and two cousins in Lynbrook, New York, for a few weeks, and then within a month, we arrived in Nashua, New Hampshire. Oh, okay. Which is a former mill town.

2:16 And in December, amid snow and which is so foreign and scary to people from the Caribbean, but for kids, it has that magical. Sure. Piece to it. Sure. Yeah. Not quite as jarring when you're a child as when you're an adult, I guess. Yeah, no, it's. You know, kids. Kids love snow, and I was one of them. So if I ask you where your story starts, what does that mean to you? That would mean our barrio on the outskirts of Havana, which was called Juanelo. It's still there. It's still a scrappy little barrio full of working people, working class people. But if I had to say a moment, I think the moment would be really the beginning of Property of the Revolution, which is the scene when I, you know, my Cuban life ends. And I was just shy of six years old. I was playing at my great grand, at my grandmother, my paternal grandmother's house. I heard the sound of a motorcycle.

3:22 I knew that some. That always when a motor, when you heard that motorcycle, someone, something big was going down. I couldn't quite figure out what it was, but people were disappearing. From what I could see, families would just disappear overnight. And I knew that the thing was, that event was tied to this motorcycle appearing. And so I ran down the street to our house, and there was a mob in front of the house and a motorcycle parked up on the sidewalk. And inside my house, my father was being interviewed by a guard with a gun. My grandmother was holding my baby brother, and she was crying, and he was crying, and my mother was running around behind them, packing are the one suitcase we'd be allowed to take out. Oh, wow. So within no time, we were out on the street, and he locked the door and put a banner across the door, which I had seen on other doors.

4:19 It was a long banner that sealed the door shut. And many years later, I learned that it said Property of the Revolution, because we had applied to leave. And one of the things that you knew would happen if you got your exit papers after the revolution was that everything you owned had to be turned over to the government, to the revolution. And so that is emblematic for me. And a moment where my story begins. Yeah, you're so young at that point. And so to view that through a child's lens, I think is really interesting as well, because I think for a lot of us when we're children, things are simpler in terms of, like, this happened. And this is what my perspective is, right, that we don't hold a lot of the nuance from other experiences in our lives. So to experience that at 5, almost 6 years old, what did that. What did that mean to you? Did you have any context for that before it happened? No, I didn't.

5:22 You know, I. My parents, our extended family always put us children first, and they protected us. And we were. We were persecuted and called worms, which is what the government called people who turned away from the revolution. And they even taught me how to react at school if somebody called Me a gusano. And they would play at home a game where you would wriggle your. If someone calls you gusana, what do you do? And I would hold up my, my pinky and wiggle it and say, I'm a gusanita, I'm a little. And it was a giggling, funny reaction to being called kusana.

6:05 And that's what. So they always protected us and shielded us. But the context, you're right, I didn't have a context. But do you know how children, young children, even though they don't have a vocabulary, they sense an injustice when it's happening. They know something's unfair. And I think that that was what I recognized that night. And then in all the nights that followed, that something unjust had happened, something unfair had happened. And that stuck with me. And so I was curious about all those stories and always begged my old people, my viejos, to tell me stories about Cuba.

6:50 And they did. You know, growing up in a multi generational family and being Cuban, you know, we tend to talk a lot. It's a very verbal culture. I was blessed with stories every day. And I saw what stories did for my family. It revived, it resurrected what was lost. And they always get, they always seemed happy when they were talking about Juanelo, our home. Yeah, I think that's so important and so incredible that even at that age and beyond, you were so invested in your history and your family and where you came from. Because I think especially when, when you live or grow up in America, there's always this sense of you came from somewhere else. Right. Like that's the whole, that's the whole thing of America, as much as people try to deny it now I am third generation, so, you know, my ancestors came through in the early 1900s, but from where? Italy? Uh huh. I thought with Peterkin it would be, oh, that's my dad's side. Oh, that's a little earlier, you know, Scottish. But my mom's side is Gizzio and so Italian. And they came through in the early 1900s, and there's still so much emphasis placed on the culture and, and the memories and the stories and, you know, growing up in

8:21 South Philly and my grandfather and all of my stories and, and I share a very similar experience in that I was always seeking out the older members of my family to tell me stories. There's always somebody in the family, thank God, right? Yeah. Well, at least I think it's really. And I know you do too, because my cousins, we, you know, I grew up in a household with three mothers. My mother, my grandmother, and my aunt. And my. My uncle and my father were the two dads. And then I had cousins that were like brothers, two of them, and my. My own siblings.

9:01 My. My younger brother and sister. There was no one else that seemed to have the patience or the interest about the past. Stories about the past. And I lived for them. Did you find that that changed as they got older? Yeah, a little bit. A little bit. My sister. Maybe it has something to do with being female, I don't know. But my sister was always very interested, and she has a good memory for little details like that, so. But I pulled whatever they had from them for the book. It was really, in many ways a family project, because I was lucky enough that much of what I wrote is hap. I wrote before they passed, before the old people passed.

9:48 Yeah, the viejos, as I called them, the elders. And so I was able to get a lot of confirmation from them and also from my siblings and my cousins. Yeah. I have so many questions for you. I don't even know where to start, because I love. I love generational stories. I think they're so important, and I think that we don't always give credence to the fact that generational stories impact us for generations and that it's not just, you know, you were five or almost six when you left Cuba and you had your own experience, but to live through the eyes of your elders and to know their stories, your life was completely affected by and influenced by their experience. Yes. You know, and I wonder sometimes, even now, especially because, you know, the book is out and I've been doing a lot related to the book. It's almost like my life is their life. And, you know, you wonder sometimes, am I missing out on my own life? Like, it's. So much of what I've lived is to honor their life, to honor their experiences, and to tell a story that I don't think has been told enough, if at all, which is the. The true events around the revolution, the Cuban revolution that so many people seem to think they understand and in some cases still worship, almost because of

11:21 the romantic figures of Fidel and Che and the fact that they happened. They came into the attention of the world in the 60s when in our country here we were going through this cultural revolution. And so these young people who were anti war and who were protesting racial discrimination saw in Cuba the answer. These young, you know, handsome, whatever, revolutionaries, and they bought all of the propaganda that they. That they very successfully spun. So, yeah, I guess it's Part mission. Part mission for the theme of the book, the main context of the book, which was the revolution, but also the theme of this intergenerational bond which comes through stories and the richness that all of that brings. But does that mean then that I haven't lived my own life, lived my own adventures, and. Of course I have. But you definitely, when you're focused on their stories, it shapes everything. Sure, yeah. I mean, it is a trajectory of your life. Right, that not everybody can say that they have. I imagine even your family members in your generation that contributed to the book still can't have the. They don't have the same perspective because they didn't live it out like you

12:53 did. Yeah, I think you're right. And they. What's happened with the book is that I have forced them to relive a trauma that they, you know, don't want to think of necessarily as a trauma. I myself, in the book I write how I never saw it as a trauma until I was. My daughter was the age I was when we lost our Cuban lives. Because, again, stories. The power of stories. So I had these really strong women in the family who spun their own story about what happened to us, which was, we won. We beat Castro, we beat communism. Look at us go. If we face discrimination, when we did, it was, don't worry about that. That's just an ignorant American who doesn't know how awesome Cubans are and feel sorry for them.

13:49 So when. When my daughter turned the age I'd been almost six, I became very depressed. And it's in the book, in Property of the Revolution, where that depression leads me to a realization that, in fact, what happened to me, it took a psychiatrist to point this out to me. I had thought that my daughter, our daughter wasn't ready for kindergarten when the psychiatrist did the evaluation and said, she's totally ready, but I'm worried about you. And I thought, oh, these. These shrinks, they just won't let you go. And she said, I think you're very depressed, which I didn't believe either. And I think it has something to do with the trauma you experienced when you were your daughter's age. And I said, what. What are you talking about? What trauma? And she explained, if you lose everything that you know overnight and your family is.

14:45 Is bereaved, and. And you. And you never see your family again, and everything gets. That's trauma. I said, no, it's not trauma. That's not. Because it meant I had to change my story. The story I'd been Told the story that had helped us survive and live like we were the bomb. We were awesome. And so it took a long time. Wow, that's incredible. And I imagine is something that a lot of people who have been in a similar situation can relate to because it's a survival skill, right? Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And especially I. I imagine as. Because this is not my experience, but I imagine as women who are truly the leaders of the family, they are kind of our. Our record keepers, but also our emotional guideposts, you know, whether we want to acknowledge them as leaders or not, Everybody looks to their mothers and grandmothers, you know, for their cues. And so. Yeah. How do you survive if you're not able to spin this in such a way that keeps your family moving forward? Yeah. And that's what they did. Consciously or not.

16:05 Yeah. Interested in their own. And they were telling themselves that story. They were grieving. In the book, you know, there are scenes where I'm trying to figure out what's going on in our family. We're in this snowy new world. The language sounds like people are screaming or chewing when they talk. It doesn't make any sense because there was no English as a second language then. You were just put into the school. And I would go around the house, and I would find my mother or my aunt in a dark. In their rooms with the lights off. And I'd knock. They'd answer. And they'd been crying. They were crying. They'd say, I just have a backache or a headache. And a few occasions, I remember going into the medicine chest and looking for aspirin. In those days, there were no, you know, safety.

16:57 I don't think there were any safety bottles, actually bringing them back, some pills and. But they didn't want to admit that what they were going through. They were trying to protect us. Now, when I started writing, and even before, once we got older, if you ask, they told you what it was like. They had no problem telling you what it was like. And every now and then, they'd bring it up themselves. But, yeah, those stories. Those stories saved us. They made everything possible. They eased the pain, and they. You know, they let us laugh at anything bad that happened. We were. We were superheroes.

17:41 Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think in a way, you were, regardless of your experience. I think immigrants are superheroes. Every. I mean, we think. I think a lot of people think they know what the immigrant experience is like. Right. They know that it's very difficult. But I think the book takes you to a place where you see what is difficult and what is miraculous and what is hysterically funny and what is so heartwarming. And it's a place that very few people really experience. It's only that generation and the first generation, whether you're a child or an older person.

18:24 I think it's the luckiest families, the luckiest immigrant families have the multiple generations smashed into one house, figuring out how to survive and making magic every day. Well, I mean, that's what community is. Right. So it is. I think it is lucky and important. Yeah. You know, when you say community, it was like a little island. Like we were our own little Cuba. Yeah. In the. In New Hampshire, where there were no Latino. Almost no Latinos at the time. No Spanish tv, no Spanish radio, nothing. And we were forced to speak Spanish at home. So we had. So I thought Spanish was like our family secret code.

19:06 I didn't understand that other people spoke it. And when our relatives would come from Miami or New Jersey, they knew our language. So I remember once going to a lake and there was an Ecuadorian family with lots of kids. So they immediately caught my attention. And they were speaking Spanish. My mother. Because in those days, if they heard anybody speaking Spanish, they ran toward them and my mother was talking to them. And I thought, oh, I didn't know we had other cousins in the area. So, you know, like, why didn't anybody tell me I had all these other cousins that I could be playing with? I thought, yeah, you know, if they're speaking Spanish, they're related to me. Yep. Which is a different experience from what the. Like a Miami Cuban American would have experienced, because they went out, their teachers spoke Spanish, their pharmacists spoke Spanish. Yeah. So it's a unique experience, I think, when you end up in a far. As the far flung representative of your culture and your country, which is what happened to us. I think, too, you know, I have had the privilege of interviewing a few immigrants to the United States.

20:21 And one of my first interviews that I did, it was early on, and this man was from Somalia, and he really broke down a lot of the experience that. I think you're right in that we assume things are difficult, but we don't think about what that means day to day. I think a lot of times we assume that people that come to the United States, first of all, all want to be here, but second of all, that, you know, they arrive and it's like a mental struggle and maybe, like, they have a little bit issues assimilating, but overall, like, it's something that everybody can, you Know, overcome really easily. And the logistics of just being here, coming to a totally different climate, not having a choice. I'm assuming you were resettled through a refugee center. Well, yeah, we. At that time, nobody wanted more Cubans in Miami, so they were pushing you out. But yeah, we had a sponsor in my aunt who had nothing with her. They had come just six months before.

21:35 But yeah, you're hitting on something that's really important, which is that in general, refugees are fleeing. They are fleeing with nothing. They know that they will probably not be able to go back, that their family probably won't be able to come out. And there's a kind of grief and trauma that's unique to that. Generally. An immigrant generally wants to like in some of these cases, especially at the turn of the century, for example, you're coming to hopefully have a better life. You're coming with dreams and to America. But that's not every immigrant. Yeah, there's a subset of immigrants that come with what happened to us in varying degrees. Yeah. And the other piece of that is those complexities and the difficulties are something that stay with you.

22:33 The immigrant experience doesn't end for many of us, especially for refugees, former refugees. And that was one of the reasons for calling the book, titling it Property of the Revolution, because in many ways we still are. Hmm. It's claimed to us. So look at even my cousins and my brother who thought they got away from, you know, they made a clean getaway, right? No trauma here, no problems here. We're Cuban American, we're awesome, blah, blah, blah. Well, now their cousin, their sister wrote this book. They're reading it, they're listening to it because I did the audiobook. Huh. It's coming back for you. And every now and then it comes back for you. Like if you see something you see on TV during the Ukrainian war, I saw, I don't know if you remember, but a lot of the earliest footage was of shelters in Poland and in other countries. And the shelters were full of old women and children, which is very much reflected in Property of the Revolution because the adults in their prime are the ones making all the decisions.

23:46 We're leaving now, we've arrived. Now they've got to work. Bam, bam, bam, every day. And so if you're lucky and you have a multi generational family, you have a grandmother or grandfather or grandaunt, they're in the home. So the two generations bond in a unique way. They're both grieving, even though the child doesn't understand that she's grieving and so there's a unique bond that forms from the experience of being a refugee or a reluctant immigrant. Yeah. Again, I can only imagine what that experience is like because I've never lived through it.

24:27 But every story that I hear, I do think it's so important, especially in today, to highlight that two things can be true at once. Right. Like you can be glad that you're in America. Exactly. And still miss where you came from and still wish it didn't have to happen this way. Right, exactly. That's it for your. That's what. That's. That's the essence, in a way, of where you live as a refugee slash immigrant. You're straddling that all the time, if you're aware. I mean, some people are just forward, back march, and they don't look back. They don't want to look back. Yeah. And I think that's what it is. Right. We don't always want to confront the difficulty that is in the past or what our trauma has been that led us here. And as you said, different people deal with things differently. But I do think it's important to acknowledge that, you know, you had spoken about grief. I think I can imagine that leaving in such a way is akin to death, you know, where it's like you're never gonna be there again, because even if you go back, it's not the same.

25:41 And so to. To actually experience almost like a living death of a place, of a time in your life, of a time when your family was in this space together. So I can imagine. I mean, that doesn't. That doesn't fully ever go away. No. Because it's something, you know, bone deep. Bone deep, most definitely. And you're right about when you return. Because I've been lucky enough, I was able to return twice. It's a reminder that what you left isn't there. First of all, my parents weren't sure they'd ever. We'd ever be able to go back. Over time, and depending on the administration, it was a little easier.

26:22 But it's a reminder that you don't really belong there either. And here, you know, I'm so American, Right. I don't have an accent. I just look like a dark American for part of the year. So you wouldn't necessarily know, but things happen all the time that remind me. I was at a baby shower, and the mother of the mom to be was next to me, and she said, do you think so? And so will have a Latina nanny? And I said, I don't. I Don't know, we haven't talked about it. And she said, because, you know, I just really, I would rather her, you know, have a Nordic nanny because, you know, the hygiene, they understand hygiene better. And I had another friend on my other side and she grabbed my arm and she knew I was about to go ballistic.

27:15 And she, she shook her head. She's like. Because you have to decide when you're going to fake, when you're going to do a, have your little battle. And I decided I was gonna let that one go. But things like that all the time. Yeah. And there are people who questioned me at times when I describe myself as Cuban American. There's a scene in the book about that at work where an executive said, why do you insist on calling yourself Cuban American? I don't know how I had just referred to my background because my name or my dark skin in the summer would, would raise questions. And I said, well, because I am. Oh no, you're not. You've been raised here. You're. And so, you know, this comes up.

27:58 Yeah. In many different ways. Yeah. It's a very interesting. And interesting probably isn't a strong enough word, but when people think that they, they get to have a say about how immigrants experience, particularly, I guess, refugees experience, you know, their, their movement forward and how they should behave or what they should or should not be doing. And I think at the, at the base level of it is we're all human, right. And so while our nationalities do inform the way that we move through the world, they aren't our identity in such a way that it should offend us when somebody wants to, you know, claim their nationality or claim one that they, you know, that they're proud of.

28:52 Yeah. It's nobody's business. I mean, really, it's. No, but nobody's, Nobody should be policing that. Your identity, your. How you identify. Yeah, I agree, I agree. But it's an offense to some people, which is crazy. It is crazy. Yeah. Where do you think that comes from? A good question. I think I didn't fit his view of what a Cuban was or even what a minority or an immigrant was. And he didn't want me to break whatever the model was that he had in his head. And it bothered him, bothered him a lot. We got into a good old fashioned debate in his office over this. And my mother, I was still living at home. It was my first job out of college.

29:41 Oh, geez. And when I went home to my multi generational home, my mother's, I told them what had happened and my mother said something like, well, that's his problem, not yours. Typical. Like, let's spin it around. He has no clue what he's talking about. But my aunt said, don't let anyone ever tell you who you are, because that's what happened to us after the revolution and we didn't stand up. So you stand up for who you are and don't ever let anybody tell you that. Yeah. You know, that's the beauty of the multi generational home.

30:22 Yeah. Especially one where people fortunately and unfortunately aren't afraid to tell you what they think. You know, in our home, nobody ever held back for the good and the bad. So. But through that comes wisdom. And through that you learn about life. You learn how to live your life, you learn how to make a better life. And it's sad. You know, when my husband Andy and I had our first child, I became depressed. And I realized that part of it was this wasn't the household that I understood as a mother. Where were my other mothers? Yeah. Where were all the other people? What did I know about having a baby? Who was going to help me? Who's going to. It just didn't add up.

31:12 That must be very jarring to move from such a multi generational culture to a very individualistic culture. Yeah. Where we place a lot of emphasis on the nuclear family, but we don't have as much of an attention span for multi generational living and being together. Community. Yeah. It's foreign. If you think about it, our culture, American culture, is one of the fundamental values is independence, and another one is privacy. And I talk about that in the book. Neither one of those mattered much in Cuban culture, but I think in general in Latin American culture and many Asian cultures too, where, you know, actually in Cuba, if somebody says, tuer es muy independiente, you are very independent.

32:08 That's a slam. Okay. Right. So those are the reasons that there's this constant clash that, you know, privacy is another one. Privacy is. There's a scene in the book where my grandmother was. The family was taking care of my grandmother, who was in a wheelchair at home. And there happened to be a physical therapist visiting the home at the time. And she came in when my parents were giving my grandmother a bath. My parents and my aunt and uncle. And they had set up this. It was a tiny little house, a contraption, where they would fill up. They moved the kitchen table out of the way. They filled up a kiddie pool in the middle. No, first they wheeled her in. Okay. They collapsed the sides. They Wheeled her in. Then they hooked a hose up to the sink, they brought it over. Now her son in laws were turning away while the daughters bathed her. And then at the end they brought the wet vac and vacuumed out the water and the whole thing. And so we were, all the little children, the great grandchildren were there and different generations were there observing this phenomenon. And the American physical therapist said, I can't believe they just did that. But what about her privacy? And I said, you know, Cuban Abuela is just.

33:33 They don't really care about the privacy part of it. They know they're being loved hard and hands on and that's what matters to them. But you see, right. Huge difference how that just doesn't match. Oh, yes. And that's what my generation does interpret for both sides, which is a whole other responsibility. Right. Because you have the distinct place of being the ones that have to understand both sides and having to learn more quickly, I imagine, the new culture that you're coming into so that you are able to help do the interpretation. Yeah, yeah. Culturally, language, I mean, you'll see this happens. I don't know.

34:28 Where do you live, Jennifer? Outside of Philadelphia. Okay, well, so that's a big city. I'm sure you've seen immigrants, immigrant children interpreting for their parents at some point or another. And that's what we did all the time. But it's language and it's explaining. Yeah. Because, you know, there's colloquialisms, there's phrases that you use in English and if translated literally like that doesn't even make sense or that's kind of scary. Why would we do that? Right. No. Yeah. One example was I was little, newly arrived and quite early I was invited to a sleepover and boy did I want to go. But my parents could not fathom.

35:13 They would say, well, why would Americans send their children to sleep in a stranger's house? They were baffled. And of course, I never went. I never went to a. When I was older, I was allowed to go and then had to come home at 10. Okay. And only if, like there were no dads around or older brothers. They were, you know, very protective. Your parents probably had it right or your family probably had it right. Yeah, yeah. But I was angry at that. Sure. I wanted nothing more than to be an American girl. Yeah. And they blocked my way all the time they wanted. When I, when I was old enough to date, they said, well, first of all, novio is the word for boyfriend in Spanish. Except it's not really boyfriend, it's betrothed oh, so even the word doesn't really exist. And they said, well, no, you're not old enough, but when you are, your grandmother will be your chaperone. Now they literally, they were totally serious about that. My grandmother was going to be in the backseat of any car that I ever went out on a date on. Oh, my God. So how was dating for you?

36:24 Oh, my God, it was, it was a. Well, first of all, the boys had to come into the house every. To pick me up and drop me off. They had to come in and they had to chat for a long time. And some couldn't take that. Yeah. And then I just, as the party was going, getting going, I'd have to be taken home. I had to be home before the end of the News hour at 11:30. Oh, interesting. If I was even in high school. I mean, very late through high school. So there were just certain things I wouldn't budge on because of protectiveness. Very protective, Very old world. Even when I wanted to go away to college, my father, my mother, my aunt and my grandmother had like a two year campaign nonstop to get him to realize or to consider that I could go away even though I wasn't married. He said to me, how can I let you go to college? You're not even married.

37:29 I can't let you leave the home. And he wanted me to go to a local Catholic college and come home every day. Yeah. And were you able to go away? I did. I went to Smith College, which is only about two, two and a half hours away. But it was a big deal for him. He really struggled. Sure. Yeah. I mean, I can't imagine having, like, not just losing what you have, but having to then recreate a life in the context of a completely different culture. And at certain points you kind of have to just go with it. Right. You can't completely shut that out. No. Yeah. And even my grandmother, my grandmother.

38:18 Andy is Jewish. We were raised Catholic. And I had. This is in the book too. So when we were dating, he would end up sleeping in my grandmother's room. My grandmother, being very devout Catholic, had, you know, crucifixes. I called it hippie Jesus. There was a hippie Jesus painting. There were palm fronds from the previous Palm Sunday. And Andy was sleeping in there. And so Andy didn't really bring it up. But then my grandmother loved Andy and said, you know, so why is it taking you guys so long to get married? You know, you're, you're 27. This is bad. You're waiting too Long. And she said.

39:01 I said, well, for example, we're trying to figure out the Jewish Catholic thing. Okay, well, explain that to me. What is the problem there? They have the Old Testament. I said, yes, but for example, symbols, Crucifixes, like in your room, those. No, I didn't say her room. I just said, crucifixes, for example, are a sign, a symbol of a group that persecuted them and for millennia. And she said, oh, okay. I didn't understand. Andy came to visit another weekend and he came down to breakfast, it was just the two of us. And he said, anna, what hippie? Jesus is gone.

39:42 The crucifix is gone. Everything's off the wall. Your grandmother, like, took everything out. What's going on? And I asked her later on, I said, well, Abuela, you know, you didn't have to do that. Oh, I will put it all back. Don't worry. I just don't want him to feel uncomfortable after what you said. And I thought I was shocked, but I attributed it to just what you were saying, which is you can't ignore what's happened. You have to make these incremental changes over time. And sometimes you don't even know you're making them. Incremental changes. And so that old heart had been practicing and making changes and opening up ever so gradually.

40:29 And so when it came to a potentially Jewish grandson in law, she was rolling with it. Yeah, yeah. It was kind of like the least of her. No. Yeah. And she. This is a woman who read her Bible every day and always had it out to wherever she was reading. Yeah, I think that's a really interesting, interesting juxtaposition of, you know, the immigrant who is, you know, very set in their ways, or like you said, old world, even very staunch in their beliefs, are also the people that are able to be open and accepting of others more readily because of their own experience. Yeah. Isn't that weird when you think about it?

41:17 It does. It's. It's contradictory. Yeah, it's contradictory. But that's part of the beauty of the, of the immigrant experience. If you dig in like those are these, are these nuances. Right. When we were talking about how people think they know. But if study it a little bit more closely, you really see the miracle of immigration. It's our oldest human story, you know, of being the other, of having to leave home for one reason or another. And there are miracles in that story. Absolutely. So I want to kind of go back, if you don't mind, because I would really love to hear from Your perspective. The. And I know this is a. This is a big question, so first of all, take it however you want. And you're scaring me, Jennifer. Strokes here. No, I. You had mentioned before that people think they know about Cuba and the revolution and what that meant. Can you kind of walk through the broad strokes of what that was and how you and your family saw it differently from maybe it's taught to us in America? Yes.

42:32 Okay, so let me. I will try to do the best job I can with this, but in the most simple terms, when the rebels were gaining attention and backing and support in Cuba, which was during the 50s, the vast majority of Cubans believed what the different rebel groups. There were three fronts. Fidez was one. And they believed what all of the rebels were saying, which was that they were going to restore the 1940 liberal democratic constitution, which had been in place throughout the 40s and remains a model of liberal democracy, democratic principles. They're going to oust the Batista dictatorship, which had been in power since 1952, and restore democracy to Cuba, restore free elections to Cuba. That's where the vast majority of Cubans hoped and thought this was going. They were not looking for a communist revolution, which is somehow the way that the propaganda came out after the revolution.

43:46 It was like the Cubans wanted a communist revolution. That's not what they wanted. They wanted now. They believed in Fidel. And Fidel himself said, this isn't a communist revolution, and it's as green as a palm tree. And it was only after, I believe, Bay of pigs in 1961, April of 61, that he admitted that it was a communist revolution. And then it was, whoa. For most people. But BY Then, by 1961, he took power January 1, 1959, when Batista fled. And so all of 59, 60, part of 61.

44:29 So two and a quarter years, people could see everything had changed. So there were committees for the defense of the Revolution that sprung up on every block, which were basically spy centers. Spying centers. People were denounced for not being revolutionaries. People lost their little businesses and the world life had changed already. There were Russian technicians moving in to neighborhoods and Cubans being thrown out of their homes for the Russian technicians to live there. That's in the book, too. And so my mother was a perfect example of someone who ended up crossing, going, doing a 180 in the late 50s. She actually risked her life to help the rebels. She collected money and medicine to send to the rebels. Oh, wow. Clandestinely, she was part of a cell, and she was almost arrested once And a cop, a Batista cop from our neighborhood, intervened and saved her. So she was all in on the revolution. Then after the executions, after Fidel and Che Guevara were executing thousands of people without trials who were linked to Batista.

45:48 And seeing all these other changes, she gradually began to realize that this was the opposite of what she had risked her life for. And many, many Cubans had to come to that decision, or came to that decision and ended up losing their country, ended up doing something they never thought they would have to do, which was leave their beloved family, generations of their family. In the United States, as in most developed countries, you have this ability and this understanding as you grow up that you can move to the west coast, you can move to another state for school and work and whatever. And that's natural in Cuba, especially at that time. You stayed with your family.

46:35 You stayed in your neighborhood. You built your new life where your parents had had their lives. So to leave your old people behind, never to see them again, we were working class. It wasn't about leaving the little that we had materially. It was about knowing you would never see your old people again. You would never be there to care for them during a time that looked like it was only going to get worse. And it did only get worse. So those are just things that came out of nowhere for these people who thought they were going to have free elections and a restoration of a democracy that had been in place before the Batista dictatorship. Yeah. So one of the changes was Cubans could no longer leave the country as they always had been able to. Now you had to get the government's permission, an exit pay exit visa, which only a handful of countries still to this day require.

47:36 And Cuba, you know, was, I don't know, 40 years before Cuba lifted that restriction. And still, even though it doesn't officially exist, you still have to notify the authorities that you're seeking a visa to travel somewhere. And not everybody can leave, because if they educated you as a doctor, for example, they own you. And if the country needs you, you can't leave. You're just one of those who won't be able to leave. So is there less incentive to pursue? I mean, I feel like, you know, education is a lot of people who want to leave. It's their quote, unquote ticket. Is that kind of opposite in this? Yeah, it's interesting. I think for medical professionals, they may. Well, first of all, you don't. Generally, you don't choose what you study.

48:32 So you're offered, had, let's Say four majors, and then they choose what. Which major you will study. Interesting. Yeah. That's your free educa. One of the ask many. There are many. And if you're a person who has a bad revolutionary record, meaning you haven't gone to the. You haven't volunteered, you haven't. You've criticized the government, you're not gonna be accepted. You know, they're. You're gonna. You have a different path, you have a different life because of what you believe and because you're not with the revolution, you're a problem. So there's a. What many call a political apartheid that exists that people who believe in the revolution in Europe or United States or wherever and still defend it apparently have no problem with. Wow. While they. They themselves wouldn't live under it. Yeah. For some reason, if it's in Cuba, they've got no problem. Right, right. They don't see it that. It that way at all.

49:32 That's wild. Yeah. Now, were you taught about Cuba in school? Yes. And how was that in. In. In the 70s and when I was in high school, we. They didn't really get into it as much, but they did portray Fidel as, you know, sort of this. A hero in a way, but not, not too much. It was when I got to college and I studied economics at Smith College and the Economics department was pretty heavily Marxist. And in some. Some of the professors would tell you that they were Marxist Leninists at the beginning of the semester to identify their bias, which I thought was great.

50:16 But the problem was that the version of history they were teaching and left out all of these things that we were just talking about. And it was all like. I went to a class once where the professor described Cuba in the 50s and said that women in the 50s in Cuba had a choice. They could either be seamstresses or prostitutes because there were no options for women. When I knew that there had been women business owners. I had an aunt in my family who had a. She was a seamstress, but she had a little shop. And there were women in our neighborhood. I told you, that's a working class neighborhood. There were factories, they worked at a towel. There were women heads of households working at factories, that my mother and my aunt were teachers.

51:05 There were plenty of women in the university. And so I raised my hand and the professor didn't really want to hear from me. So I went and talked to my. The head of the department about it because, oh, the other thing that this professor said was that the Americans had bombed Havana during the Bay of Pigs. Which is not true. There were Cuban pilots in a few, because Kennedy pulled the air coverage at the last minute. But there were a few Cuban pilots in American jets and they bombed an airstrip outside of Havana, on the outskirts of Havana. They didn't bomb Havana. But all of these smithies were sitting there taking notes. So that's what I wanted to bring up to the professor, because I could. Well, the head of the department, because I couldn't seem to get the professor to add some nuance to the lecture. And the head of the department said, so what did your father do? And I thought, what does that have to do with anything? I said, my father was a forklift driver. Well, but he had a job, so he was privileged.

52:24 Anyway, before the revolution. I said, all right, well, can we talk about this lecture? And he said, in a nutshell, you shouldn't concern yourself with smithies being corrupted in a 45 minute lecture. They've lived 20 years of privileged life and they can handle this. And I actually shook his hand and left just because I was kind of in shock. But this happens. I mean, I've gone to classrooms, high school classrooms, where they have pictures of Che Guevara, who ran the secret police, who ran the executions, bragged about executions at the UN in 1964. But he's up as a hero.

53:11 And so it's an example of how. What is the saying? The victors get to write history. Yeah, history's written by the victors. And so there's another version to this. The Cubans want to tell. Cuban Americans want to tell. But one of the great lines of propaganda that the regime spun out is that you can't, you shouldn't listen to Cuban Americans or Cuban exiles, because we are. We just have a chip on our shoulder. We want the regime to fall so we can get our lands and riches back. And so in essence, they have shut down the Cuban American voice. Especially when you try to tell this other story, this, this, this more complex story. Yeah, it is complex. Right. And I think that is the overall theme of everything, is that there's nuance to everything and almost nothing is black and white. And, you know, because what was overthrown was a dictatorship.

54:18 So it wasn't, it wasn't good. In the 50s, it was a brutal dictatorship. Yeah. So it's not that that's what anybody wanted, but to replace it with something so awful. Yeah. That ended up being worse. Yeah. More restrictive, more. At least there was economic freedom, there was economic progress. Cuba, most Americans don't know this. During the 50s Cuba had ranked second, third in the hemisphere, fourth in all of the key economic development categories. It had a GDP per capita the equivalent of Italy or Spain or one of the southern European countries. It had more hospital beds per capita than the vast majority of Latin American countries. And it was first in the world, in some areas.

55:10 The first color television broadcast, I believe the longest railway system, certain things like that. So at least they had that. They barely have that now. Economic freedom. Entrepreneurialism is still a, A bit of a dirty word. It's just, I mean, I, I'm angry and I am not and zero. Part of me is Cuban. But yeah, I get so angry when it's, you know, these people in power just promise all of these wonderful ideals and at the end of the day, it never looks like that because, you know, that's the other one is power. Corruption. Yes. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Yes. And, you know, the more I live my life, the more I am just like, this is crazy because nothing, you know, it's almost like nothing can exist in goodness. It's all such a power grab and, you know, so many people live their lives working so hard to just have a life, and it's, you know, the pawns that. That are being played.

56:28 Yeah, that's. I, I don't know if that has ever been different or if it ever will be different. Yeah. Do you think. No, you know, I think that's just human humanity and, and the imbalance of power. The imbalance. There's always going to be a winner and a loser in a political economic system. Politicians are always going to simplify and lie to their advantage. And for me, one of the things that helps is a free press. Cuba doesn't have a free press. Neither does any totalitarian government. That's the one shot we've got. And even our press, the press has its bias.

57:10 Each media outlet, and so it falls on us. And it's really hard as a citizen to decide now, especially today, where to go for unbiased news. Yeah. Oh, gosh, very hard. Yeah, it, it really is. But I, I think we're seeing a rise in independent journalism just because of the, the mainstream and, and I, you know, biases. Yeah. But I also think the business of it. Right. You know, who get. It's all about who can get the most clicks. It's not about who can get the news out there. It's about what can you say that will get people's attention and how do you. You get to their emotions, you rile them up. Yeah. It's not Even good emotions.

57:57 No. Oh, gosh. You want anger, they want a little. They want what you're describing. That's how they want to leave their consumer. And it's awful because, you know, there are so many good things that are happening out there. Yeah. So I see it all the time. I see hope, I see reasons to hope all the time. And you, you, you don't even have to look that hard. You just have to have people sharing like you, human to human. Hey, you know what I just saw? This is kind of pared down, but basically a right wing neighbor approach a left wing neighbor who was hosting a family of Syrian refugees.

58:38 And the left wing neighbor thought the right wing neighbor was coming over to complain because the kids were making noise in the driveway. But the right wing neighbor came over to say, you know, those kids are just playing basketball. I've got all these bikes from when my kids were little in the garage. And why don't you go over there and get those bikes and, you know, teach those kids how to ride a bike. And then he went back, he saw children. He didn't see refugees. He saw children. He saw the human being, he saw the grandmother. He understood that these were human beings. Yeah. And I know the story because the left wing neighbor was at an event, we were doing a refugee assistance fundraising event.

59:23 And he told the story and I said, you know, I've seen that over and over, over and over. But we don't talk about that. We don't hear it. It's all the negative stuff. We have to believe in each other as, as citizens, as neighbors, and as people who have the potential to, To. Yeah. I refuse to give up my hope of this country or of my fellow citizen. I've seen too much. I've benefited from it over and over in my life. And certainly as newcomers in New Hampshire in 1967, my parents worked in factories.

1:00:10 Those factory co workers took them under their wings, taught them all about life in the north, how to, you know, where the White Mountains were, how to, how to roast a marshmallow, how to use chapstick. Chapstick can save your life. You know, things like that. Yeah. And they didn't have to be that way. And they were. We faced discrimination that happened, but, but, but we focused on this other piece. Absolutely. Because there were more good people out there than bad people. Yeah. I, I do think that we have to hold on to that for dear life because there's no other way to survive. Yeah. And it's the truth though, right? Yeah. I mean, it has absolutely Been my experience, yes. A hundred percent. Yeah. I have met so many wonderful people and this experience of interviewing, doing these interviews has just cemented that on a whole different level. But, you know, I think it's interesting in the moment that we're in, in time in America. I can't remember a time when people were so identified by their political views.

1:01:19 Right. I think you're right. And so I think as much as we can shed that they are worn as badges of honor as much as, you know, fences for other people. And I am certainly guilty of doing that kind of thing myself. Me too. Me too. So I cann say any of this without pointing a finger at myself as well, but it's hard. There's. There is a lot of emotion, there is a lot of anger and, you know, fear. Fear. I think there's fear. And that. I think that's what it is more than anything. I think it's fear. And so I think it's really interesting to be having this conversation now too, especially with, you know, both sides of the aisle are afraid. They're afraid of the same thing, but how it happens. Yes, right. And what it's called. Yeah. Right.

1:02:12 So both sides are afraid of this in a way of totalitarianism. Yeah. Right. One. One party ruling everything in a total way from top to bottom, which is what you have in Cuba, a single party state for the last 66 years, military dictatorship. But for some people, that's okay because it's their political ideology experiment. So somehow that's okay. But they wouldn't want to see what's happening there, here. Right. Under a strictly Republican Party flag. Same thing.

1:02:54 But maybe that would be okay for the Republican Party to see if it was called. It was. If it was under their banner. Right. So, yeah, we can't do that. We have to. And you know, the other thing? How about this? How about if each time a friend tells us one of these really heartbreaking, horrific stories, we have in our pocket, one of our good ones, to bring that friend back and say, let's not give up hope. Yeah. We have to do that for each other. I hope people do it for me. I know people do it for me. Yeah. I will say I. I've said this to a few people, but this, doing this podcast really restored my faith in humanity in a way that I didn't think was possible.

1:03:42 Because a lot of the work that I do is around domestic violence advocacy. I know. Yeah. And it is really hard to be in that space because it's something that it's in A lot of ways it hasn't changed very much. And you know, to the outside world, if you're not experiencing it or if it's not something that you're looking at, it doesn't feel like that big of a part of life. Whereas I see it, I feel like every time I turn the corner. And so I really didn't realize how much anger that I was just harboring in.

1:04:24 Not in kind of like society in general. Right. That, that this was still as big of an issue as it was and why couldn't people see? And this really broke me down to the. Again, human to human interaction. And I do believe that anytime we look at things from a bird, anything from a bird's eye view, we lose perspective. We think we're seeing a bigger pict or a full picture, but most of the time we're, what we're actually missing is the nuance or the variables that make it human. Yeah. And we're not able to really connect from a bird's eye view. Right. If we're all the way up here, how are we connecting with people? Yeah. No matter how high up you get, you got to go down.

1:05:15 Like you said, you know, you have to go down and connect with people and, and always know that unfortunately there is evil in the world. It's always been there. It's always going to be there. But there's goodness too. And there's the potential for goodness too. It's not looking at the label, but looking at the person and trying to, not even trying to suss out how far to the right or to the left they are. Just who are they? Who are they? What do they care about? What, what are they worried about? What are. Let's find some common ground. We have so much more in common.

1:05:55 Yeah. But there's so little space given to this. When I talk to high school kids, I always talk to them about this. That's great. What happened in Cuba after the revolution was neighbor went against neighbor and you had to prove which. How, how much you believed in an ideology. That's the extreme of where we're heading. Yeah. Because what you, you just said. Right. We're. When we talk with each other, you're like, well, a new person. Where is this person really at? Yeah. Can I. First of all, why are we worrying about that? Let's first start with who is this person? What's happened to this person in her life?

1:06:42 Start there. Not, not with the politics. Yeah. With the humanity. Yeah. Yeah. I, I truly do. I know that it would change so much in the way that we. Why, why do you think we're all there? Do you think, do you think it's anger? Do you think it's fear? What, what, which of those emotions is the bigger culprit, do you think? I think anger is a masking emotion. So I think fear is at the root. And I think you're right. I also think that, you know, unfortunately, while there are so many good things about technology and, you know, as I sit here with all of my technology.

1:07:27 Yeah. While I think there's so many good things, I do believe that we were never meant to have this much access to information. And not just information, but access to whatever everybody else thinks at any given moment. Right. We are in a weird space where there almost like are no experts there. Anybody can get online and say whatever they think. And the amount of reactions to that thought is the validity of that thought. Right. That's the perceived validity. So if you, as a quote unquote influencer, get on and start just making something up, as long as you have enough people standing behind you saying, yeah, that's right, or even following you right then, okay, that's the truth now. And that's really scary. And so I think.

1:08:23 I think there's a fear. I also think there's an exhaustion of, you know, we, we feel that we are. We know who's safe and we're not going to venture outside of that because we're too tired to do that. Yes, I agree with all of that. I don't know what the solution is. I think being aware of it the way you are. Well, you're finding a solution, aren't you? I'm trying. I just think it's marvelous that you go to the human, you listen, you go face to face, you listen to the story, and you are present as a human being and not on a screen and not on a. Through a. Through a gadget.

1:09:12 It's so incredibly important. And I think I said this to you when I first came in, right? Like, you're doing the opposite of what all of my other experience promoting the book has been, which is generally like super efficient, super quick when it's convenient, and in and out and no depth. I mean, well, there's depth if you can find a little bit of time, but the human element, we gotta get back to that. And you know, the other thing that you're doing right, is you're using stories. You love stories. Like you said when we were chatting before, we're wired for stories. There's no time for stories. We're Drowning in data. Yeah. And starving for wisdom.

1:10:02 Yes. And where do you get wisdom? Through the stories of the older generation. I think they're ahead of us. They learn things. Maybe they learned the wrong things, but we can make up our minds about that. Yes. And I have always loved stories. I especially love stories from old people. And maybe that's. I think old people are scared, too. I've got some older friends, neighbors in their 90s, and they're scared, too. But we have to get back to the human being and to hope. You were talking about the domestic violence situation, and I know I've heard you say. Cause I was listening to some other work that you've done about how domestic abuse isn't within the home necessarily.

1:10:52 It can happen anywhere that it's abuse. It's. It's taking someone's voice, it's controlling someone. And in a way, that's happening to us through media and through technology, we're being abused, and we've got to stand up for ourselves, and we have to be very conscious of how to do that. And it's incredibly difficult because we've. Like you said, there are so many good things about this technology. Yeah. I mean, I don't think we throw the baby out with the bathwater here, but I do think that I am hopeful in seeing that there are movements of people realizing how damaging it can be to spend all of our time doing this or people, younger people getting off of social media.

1:11:39 I think it's marginally easier for people that didn't have it growing up. Right. So for those of us who didn't have it growing up, it's. It's easier because we know what life is like without it. Yep. But for those of us or for those that are toddlers and are, you know, being introduced to this technology, I feel like it's harder to disconnect from that because it's all. That's the only thing, you know. So I am hopeful in seeing some of these younger generations purposefully pulling back from the Internet or social media. Yeah. What. Where are those stories? Yeah, let's. Let's listen to that. Yeah. And listen to what? What it's like. I.

1:12:23 I've read not. Not of young people, but of adults who do that and what it means to them after a month. And it's life changing. You sleep better, you think better, you. You're not as exhausted like you said. Yeah. You know, when I intentionally. Because we all get to choose how we use our time. Right. I mean, to a degree, there's privilege in that as well. But if I choose to read a fictional book over scrolling through a news app or through a social media app, that regardless of who I know on the app, I'm going to see news and political opinions, I am so much happier and lighter feeling than when I choose to invest my time. It doesn't all have to be productive as we see it as Americans. Right. I think that's another thing that's coming out, which I love, is that the investment in fictional story and how important it is to our ability to problem solve and imagine and move through the world in creative ways.

1:13:38 So, yeah, I think there is so much out there and there is hope to be found. But once again, we've got to get down to the. The street view and go people to people or the porch view. Right. Like that. That image that I have in my head of, you know, somebody's an old guy, old gals rocking in a chair and I'm sitting on the floor listening and finding a way to do that is I. I've always loved stories, though. It's. That wouldn't be hard. It's really just the. Finding the time. Yeah. Yeah. Finding the time. And I don't know. I don't know.

1:14:19 It's a cultural thing too. I think this culture in particular is especially primed for the technology because we're all about efficiency, we're all about performance, we're all about production. Yeah. Achieving. Yeah. I mean, it's hugely harmful. It can be hugely harmful if we're not putting it in the right context culturally. There's a scene in here, in the book about Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer because we came in December, was on the radio all the time. Okay. I was made fun of at school because I didn't know the lyrics. I didn't know anything. But my mother asked us one night what the lyrics meant and we tried to explain it to her and she said, wait, so. So there's this little deer and the deer, everybody makes fun of him, but then the deer can light the way and so then everybody likes him because he can do something nobody else can do. She said, folks, I think this country is going to be all about performance.

1:15:30 Wow. And I never forgot that. And it is. That's incredible. Yeah. And so. But it takes somebody from a culture where it's not about performance, it's about maybe who you are as a person or what you do for your family, how good of a person you are to your family. I would say that that's a very, very important part of the Value system of not just Cubans, maybe, but of most Latino cultures. Fundamental difference. Yes. And it requires such different talents and skills and belief systems. Yes, yes, immensely. I think that is extremely poignant and wise because that story, as we hear it is, you know, these people finally came around to this. This cute little reindeer because they knew it was the right thing to do. Right. And. But you're right, it is.

1:16:36 It's about what he can do for them. And I will tell you very honestly, I've spent a lot of time in therapy talking about this very thing. You know, I'm only worth what I can provide to somebody. Yes. Yeah. I'm only worth what I can produce for somebody. Yeah. And that's not true. It's not. But it is, I think, what many of us believe, even if we don't realize it. Yeah, exactly. We don't realize it. We don't realize what's driving us, but that's part of what's driving us. Producing, performing, achieving, accumulating, acquiring. And in the end, it doesn't even matter. Things don't matter. It really doesn't. What matters is, you know, who's with you, who you are to them, who they are to you. Yeah. At the end of the day, most of us will never see or experience these people in these platforms that we spend so much time arguing over and dedicating our lives and time to and resources.

1:17:42 You're right. What we should be focusing on is who we are directly interacting with and how we move through life with them. Yeah. It's seeing them. Really looking at them. Really seeing them. Yeah. I think one of the things that this has taught me more than anything is that listening is very active. It's not a passive thing by any means. And oftentimes I think we listen in order to formulate our response and not listening to understand. And there's a huge difference in that. It doesn't sound like it's very big, but it's. There's a huge difference in that. Huge.

1:18:24 You know, some of that is just human. Right. Because we want to tell our story, we want to have our opinion, but we can be intelligent about it. We can be intentional about it, and I think we'd be better off. We have some control. It doesn't feel like it, but we have some control for sure. So how was it then you have children of your own that's a whole new generation that is born in America and doesn't know the Cuban experience as you and your family members did. So how was that different for you? And you also mentioned, you know, not necessarily being close in proximity to your family when you started having kids as well. Yeah, yeah, I was farther away.

1:19:14 It was a nuclear family that seemed completely foreign to me. A mother, father and a child. What is that? I've never seen that, and I don't know what to do with that. Yeah, it's lots of things. It's the loss of language. So I tried very hard to hold on to language, but it was impossible to really keep that bilingual home once the kids started elementary or even before. And so I let that slip. So, you know, just like you had incremental change, Change is inevitable. Well, here's another one where when we were growing up, even after we left home, Hunt street, which is where we lived and was a duplex, with the two families living right next to each other and people going back and forth all day long through the basement in the winter, through the front porch in this. In the good weather. Two families under one roof, but really one family. And then we started moving out, but then the mothers took care of our children, so we would drop off the children there.

1:20:24 And every weekend there was a christening, a birthday, a graduation, or you just stopped in. But other people were there. And so there were 27 of us, often in this little environment, and happened naturally, and it wasn't a big deal, but we were always together, and that's happening less and less. The viejos are gone. Turns out I'm the matriarch now, so I feel like I'm supposed to hold this thing together and keep the traditions alive. And I would beat myself up sometimes as I saw things falling apart and just not being the same. We're still a close family, but we just don't see each other. The human to human, like what you're doing, this. This human to human, face to face, it's not the same to text.

1:21:17 And so I've stopped beating myself up a little bit about being unsuccessful at having it be exactly the same way. And I think, I thought about this the other day. If you think about the galaxy, the image of a galaxy, you have the central part. It starts as a center, and it spins and it spins and then falls apart. Then it goes into other little galaxies. And so it's inevitable. But I'm still holding my little galaxy together. And I want to slow it down, slow that spinning down. And I can only do what I can do. Yeah.

1:21:57 And I think writing the book and capturing that moment of centrality, of unity in the face of super hard things, really losing everything, you have, including your loved ones, knowing it's just you and moving forward and the beauty of that and the humor that we had in that house and the love that we had in that house. At least I've done that. And we can go back to it when we need to, because the book is there and we've shared it with a lot of people. Readers tell me. Well, they've said over and over a few things.

1:22:40 I hear I'm jealous of what you had, which is so ironic. We had literally nothing, but yet we had everything. And then the other thing I hear about is I didn't want to leave. I didn't want to leave where I was. And we saw that growing up. We saw all these Americanitos coming to the house all the time because they knew. Knew there was something weird going on there that they didn't see anywhere else. So it's inevitable that it'll change. I'm going to hold onto it as much as I can and do what I can to force the human to human as much as possible.

1:23:20 And I know that I've captured some of it. I mean, what you have done is truly priceless. And I think, you know, you are rich in the ways that that matter the most. And at the end of the day, when people sit down to think about it, I think that they know that. I think that knowing our family stories is important. Having someone to record them is just another level. Because for stories to continue to be passed on, you need to continue to have a record keeper. And if you don't have somebody pursuing that, then those stories are lost to time. And it's unfortunate.

1:24:06 But, you know, this was part of the reason that I started this podcast was because my grandfathers were storytellers. And listening to their stories was they both had wildly different lives and were wildly different people, but they both were storytellers. Oh, I love that. And they both had incredible journeys, and they're both gone now. And I don't want their stories to die with them. I don't want them to die with me. What are you doing with those stories? Well, my one grandfather, I actually happened to interview him two months before he passed. Oh, good. And so I do have some of his stories recorded.

1:24:48 My other grandfather, I would like to write a book about his story. It would have to be fiction and based on his story because I don't have enough details of what he went through because he immigrated from Hungary after being in a communist prison for four years. Oh, dear. So, wow. He was incredible and just had this incredible Spirit about him. Yeah. Not much bothered him, you know, after what he lived through. Exactly, exactly. He was a rock. Yeah. So. Oh, I hope you write that. I would really love to get going. Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. And you know what? A historical fiction novel is so much easier to sell than.

1:25:40 Because in the end, you know, we're talking about performance now. We shouldn't. But you have to think about the marketplace than a memoir. A memoir is. Especially as a non famous person. Yeah, right. Which is hilarious because personally, I will devour a memoir. Yeah. Not from a famous person, but. Yes. Like the story of Owe Me Everything. I want to learn. I want to learn. I want to know the real stuff. Yeah. I tried really hard to make Property of the Revolution historical, historically accurate. I worked really hard at that. But I structured it in such a way that many have said, and this was my goal, that it does feel more like a novel. It's very character driven and there are turning points and very, very dramatic points and themes that are consistent. And one theme leads to another, one scene leads to another. So it's.

1:26:41 Yeah, I'm really happy with not just the content, but the way that it seems to be capturing. You know, another thing that's really cool is that I thought it would be more of a woman's read. I wanted it to be a male read. You know, my father played professional baseball in the United states in the 50s. Oh, wow. So there's some baseball in here. So that was my. Well, first of all, I was. I loved sports and I loved my father's baseball stories. And I've had. I wrote some commentaries for NPR that were about his experiences as. As a Cuban player in the Jim Crow South. But I don't know, I just. I really wanted it to be for men and women, for young and old, and so far, so good, because the, the men, male readers who have reached out to me or who have talked to me after I.

1:27:36 I go somewhere are passionate about. And I think it's because they see. Because there are men and male characters, they see themselves in them like just a regular guy, kind of a jock, and he's caught up in this political tornado and he's got a fend for his family now. He's got a fend for his family in a foreign land with nothing. And they see themselves as family people, as a man. And. Yeah. It's not just for women, it turns out. Makes me so happy. Yes. And, you know, you talked about Hungary and your grandfather.

1:28:17 I did a talk at a Jewish. At a synagogue with A Jewish men's book group. On the screen on Zoom. There were a bunch of other people and one of the guys was a 92 year old man in Arizona, I think, and he had oxygen. He was head of one of the. He was using oxygen and he had his hand up the whole time and nobody picked on him. And then finally somebody picked on him. And. And he said, you know, and they loved the book, but he said, I know that this is about your Cuban abuela, but this is about my. I saw my Romanian Jewish grandmother in this book and I saw my 31 first cousins in this book. And that's my house.

1:29:08 That's where I grew up, which I loved. Yes. And I've heard that from, you know, an Iranian woman, an Afghani woman, a Lithuanian. I mean, many people have said that this is their home, their household, what they experienced, which I really love hearing because that makes us all the same. You know, we're just human beings. Once again, stories connect us more than anything ever. Yeah. Truly. Yeah. But I, I know that you have gotten, you. You've won awards for your book. I know that you have been able to really just affect some change and start discourse with your book, which I just think is so fabulous. Thank you, Jennifer. I. It's a, you know, a hard road to get a book out there.

1:30:02 And this has been the. The reward to know that people feel hopeful or happy, inspired and understand better. What more could I have asked for? And, you know, here's the other thing. They love the people and the story just like I did. And they feel the love I felt every day in this grieving, but funny and loving home. And I wanted people to feel that love and they do. And that makes people. Me so incredibly happy. Yes. That I got to share them. Share my. My viejos, my old people with them. I love that. Yeah. We'll definitely link to your book and your website in the show notes for people. I can't wait to read this. After sitting with you and hearing this much of you, I'd love to know what you think. So make sure you let me know. Okay. And. Yeah.

1:30:58 And then people can grab their own copy as well. So I urge them to. I think they'll find some hope. Yeah. And love and humor and good things. I think it's a. It's important for even the. The moment we're in right now. I think especially there's another thing people have said. Yeah. This reminds me so much of what we're going through. Yeah. There's some lessons to be pulled out for sure. So wonderful. And to find hope through it all, I think that's always gonna be the most. The strongest message. Yes. So, Ana, thank you so much for sitting with me and for doing this. It was so lovely to meet you and to speak with you. Well, I feel really happy to be here and honored.

1:31:43 And what a treat. Face to face with Jennifer. Yes. Face to face. The real McCoy. Yeah. Thank you for being interested in the story and for coming to meet me. What a treat. Thank you. My pleasure. Thank you for listening to the human experience. Everyone has a story, and I'd love to hear yours. So be sure to check out the show notes for more information about how to stay in touch, do good, and love.