To
Change the World
Price: $24.95
Subtitle: My Years in Cuba
Author: Margaret Randall
Subject: Latin American Studies , Memoir
Paper ISBN 978-0-8135-4432-8
Cloth ISBN 978-0-8135-4431-1
Pages: 247 pages, 52 illustrations
Publication Date: February 2009
View the Table
of Contents
Reviews for To Change the World
"A moving and intimate contemplation of
a key historical moment that has been relegated to the margins of
political discussion in the wake of the cold war."
—Mark Behr, author of The Smell of Apples
"To know Cuba, neither analyses nor statistics nor official
declarations nor diatribes by its adversaries are enough. One needs
eyes infused with heart, passionate eyes, with which to look at the
Cuban people in their daily life. In this book Margaret Randall looks
at Cuba through such eyes."
—Maria Lopez Vigil, author of Cuba: Neither Heaven Nor Hell
"Randall's fondness and indeed admiration for Cuba are
unmistakable, especially when she's talking about the nation's systems
of health care and education, a premise that will both provoke and
anger some readers. Yet Randall's personal reflection on a decade in
Cuba is a worthy addition to the ever growing body of literature on
Cuba--past and present."
—Boyd
Childress, Library Journal
"Many ask if those of us who lived
the Cuban revolution in flesh and spirit would wage that battle again.
Margaret Randall's loving and realistic book reveals why we would. It
gives us the highlights and shadows of a process that marked the 20th
century like no other."
—Mirta Rodríguez Calderón, Cuban
revolutionary, journalist, and feminist
Description:
In To Change the World, the legendary writer and
poet Margaret Randall chronicles her decade in Cuba from 1969 to 1980.
Both a highly personal memoir and an examination of the revolution’s
great achievements and painful mistakes, the book paints a portrait of
the island during a difficult, dramatic, and exciting time.
Randall gives readers an inside look at her children’s education, the
process through which new law was enacted, the ins and outs of
healthcare, employment, internationalism, culture, and ordinary
people’s lives. She explores issues of censorship and repression,
describing how Cuban writers and artists faced them. She recounts one
of the country’s last beauty pageants, shows us a night of People’s
Court, and takes us with her when she shops for her family’s food
rations. Key figures of the revolution
appear throughout, and Randall reveals aspects of their
lives never before seen.
More than fifty black and white photographs, most by the author, add
depth and richness to this astute and illuminating memoir. Written with
a poet’s ear, depicted with a photographer’s eye, and filled with a
feminist vision, To Change the World—neither an apology nor
gratuitous attack—adds immensely to the existing literature on
revolutionary Cuba.
About the Author:
Margaret
Randall is an award-winning feminist poet, photographer, and social
activist with more than eighty published books to her credit, such as
Stones Witness and When I Look into the Mirror and See You
(Rutgers University Press). She and her family lived in Cuba from 1969
to 1980. Randall’s previous works on Cuba include Cuban Women Now,
Cuban Women Twenty Years Later, and Breaking the Silences: 20th
Century Poetry by Cuban Women.
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Price: $24.95
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