Finding Mañana: A Memoir of a Cuban Exodus

PRAISE FOR FINDING MANANA:

“In ‘Finding Manana,’ Mirta Ojito's impressive evocation of growing up inHavana in the 1970's, there is no place for nostalgia. In trenchant, muscular prose suitable for describing Cuba's increasingly grim realities, Ms. Ojito, a reporter for The New York Times, writes about her coming-of-age and her family's rescue in the Mariel boatlift of 1980… It's impossible not to admire the boldness, the candor, the moral toughness of Ms. Ojito's writing. In this wonderful memoir, she ransoms herself from the seductions of nostalgia, and reclaims instead the beleaguered Cuba of her childhood -- a Cuba that is all the more interesting for not being looked at through the prism of longing and desire.”

—The New York Times

“The insight Ojito brings to bear, coupled with the crispness of her prose -- especially her detailed descriptions of diplomatic finagling -- make this memoir required reading for everyone interested in the history of post-Batista Cuba or of Cuban-American relations.”

—Washington Post

“Ms. Ojito's book is filled with the anguish of separation and the tragedy of living under a merciless regime. But it also celebrates familial bonds and undying love -- not to mention freedom itself, a gift too often taken for granted by those of us who have never had to live without it.”
                        —Wall Street Journal

“New York Times reporter Mirta Ojito melds the personal with the political in a moving account of her family's departure from Cuba. She also provides a solid historical context for those five months in 1980 when 125,000 Cubans arrived in Florida, a mass exodus that came to be known as the Mariel boat lift.”

                       ----People Magazine

“This is much more than one Cuban exile's bittersweet tale; it's the memoir of an entire era."

                       ----Times-Picayune (New Orleans)

”Like many Cuban exiles, Ojito says she left part of her soul in Cuba . The good news is the rest of it came over with her intact. Plenty of it went into this book.”

                   -----St. Petersburg Times