Conversations with Cuba

Superior work that puts the reader on five tours of Cuba and allows you to talk to Cubans who stayed and to experience the wonderful island paradise. The writer admits that he idealized the Revolution and wants it to work but still shows the numerous ways that it hasn't work and that the island is in trouble. I enjoyed his conversations with Cubans and the Cubans' resilent nature. Great background information for a novice to Latin American relations like myself who only recently gained interest in the island due to its recent commercial musical success. Conservatives and Castro haters will dislike Ripley's point of view, which may be unfair -- the work seems intellectually honest.

As a Cuban-American born in Cuba, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. It is about time that books are coming out giving us a true picture of the Cuban condition instead of the stereotypical, cold war, CIA (of old, I hope) inspired version of the truth. Read this book and ask yourself why is there still an embargo on Cuba and how the US can claim the human rights' high ground when it is doing this to a country that poses no threat to the US or others. This book brings the embargo to the single human being level. An eye opener of a book.

Ripley's writings on contemporary Cuba brings the reader to the hearts and minds of the Cuban people and culture. Through his eyes we experience the warmth, beauty and guile of the characters. Our senses are inundated with his descriptive prose of everyday life in Cuba. The main thing I take from this reading is that we the people of the United States have been deprived of access to an extraordinary culture.

In a time when US activists will argue that a young boy should not be reunited with his Cuban father, C. Peter Ripley's Conversations with Cuba is an important book. In a distillation of his experiences gathered in multiple visits to Cuba in the 1990s, Ripley introduces the reader to the changes taking place in Cuba. Combining his skill as an astute observer and articulate writer, Ripley challenges the language and imagery long used in the west to isolate and create mistrust of Cuba and its revolution.Conversations with Cuba makes plain that a diversity of opinion exists within Cuba about the revolution. Ripley discusses the dual problem Cuba faces as it transitions to a capitalist economy while continuing to care for its people as promised by the original revolutionary cadre of Fidel, Che, and others. Ripley learns that the struggle to achieve these potentially conflicting goals creates dissatisfaction for some, while for others an abiding faith in the revolution persists. Through the revolutionary affirming experience of his "fixer", Paulo, Ripley asks the reader to reconsider the long-held, rarely questioned stereotypes of Cuba. Just as Paulo reconsiders his views about the revolution, Ripley offers hope that the US can abandon the negative views of Cuba and consider the island and its people as they really exist.

I didn't know much about Castro's Cuba before picking up Ripley's book, and never thought I would have more than a casual interest in the subject. All that has changed since reading Conversations with Cuba. Ripley's vivid and moving portraiture of ordinary Cubans caught between their allegiances to the revolution and their hopes for future is absolutely compelling. His cinematic feel for the sun-splashed landscape and the paint-flaked cityscape is memorable. This is no Michelin guide to exotic lands and interesting places; it's a Badeker guide to the soul of modern Cuban. A wonderful book.