Cuba Diaries: An American Housewife in Havana

I read 'Cuba Diaries' by "Isadora Tattlin" (pen name) a month ago and was compelled to write about it today as I look at various stories circulating on the Web about Fidel's broken kneecap (filed under the humorous title 'The Fall of Castro'). I loved Tattlin's book and so has everyone else who I've recommended it to. Others may criticize it as being the boring diary of a housewife with not much to say, but I think that misses the point. More than any other book I've read about Cuba, 'Diaries' seems to put you squarely in Havana by showing you the challenges of every day life. Granted, Tattlin and family are not every day Cubans - she's quite frank about her life of (comparative) privilege...but she does give you a true sense of how all Cubans must survive on guile and wit. Additionally, I was fascinated by the way Tattlin chose to mask the identity of herself and husband 'Nick' described as being born in 'X' and then constantly referring to Nick's X-ian background, his X-ian associates, speaking X-ian to their children. I know you're thinking - boy, that must be annoying. It's not - I found myself intrigued and beguiled by the whole thing - trying to piece together what country it could possibly be (Eastern European is as close as I could come - and I'm not guaranteeing that's right). Plus, as an added bonus there's a dinner at the Tattlin's house with Fidel as a guest. That chapter alone ought to make you buy the book - simply fascinating the details she imparts there...like Fidel arriving (in a phalanx of limos mind you) and immediately insisting on using the mirror as he enters the house. He stands there combing his hair (for over a minute!) while the hired help looks on raptorously (and the Tattlins think "what the...."?). There are tons of small observations like that one that make 'Diaries' a truly great read.

I believe this may be the second best book I have ever read and possibly one of the most insightful travel logs ever written. Composed of almost-daily entries and organized by school year, Cuba Diaries is the journal of an American housewife living in Havana during the mid-90s. Solely concerned with feeding, entertaining and educating her children while sustaining her marriage, Isadora Tattlin details what sounds like a mundane life. Yet, because it is all happening in beautiful, wacky Cuba, the author's every day chores take on a rip-rollicking feel that will easily have you laughing out-loud. Because Cuba is the "forbidden island" just 90 miles south of Florida, there is a natural curiosity about it for any American who has ever thought about Fidel Castro and the country he has ruled since 1959. While Cuba Diaries feeds that curiosity, the author does something smart with it, too. Rather than editorialize her position on Castro or Cuba, Tattlin avoids politics altogether and instead recites bizarre facts, one right after another: "In the Diplo a seventeen-dollar cabbage" was all she wrote on entry 68 of the second school year. While other reviewers may detect a snooty, privileged attitude on the author's part or a disrespect for Cuban people in general, I never found any of Tattlin's witty observations to be remotely critical of the resourceful people who have learned to live on this island with so little for so long. On the contrary, the reader is lead to feel enormous empathy, undying respect and sheer admiration for Cubans. And though the author never pushes the reader toward any conclusions about Castro, by simply typing up the events of her four years in Cuba, Tattlin leaves you with two burning wishes: 1. that somehow Castro will somehow disappear and; 2. that you can hop on the next plane to Havana and join the fun.

The American wife of a European energy consultant, Tattlin (a pseudonym) has lived all over the world, and her four-year sojourn in Cuba is an eye opener. There's the poverty, of course, but she knew about that. The average salary is $10 a month and Tattlin's packing list covers two pages and includes such things as 216 bars of soap and 48 liters of olive oil.Partly Tattlin's fascination with Cuba is the feeling of being frozen in time; an industrial society stuck in the 1950s where cars and appliances slowly grind to a halt through rust and lack of parts and buildings crumble for want of maintenance. Partly it's the ingenuity of the Cuban people, bartering, scrounging, repairing and, of course, making the most of foreign tourists and residents. Workers in the tourist industry can earn two to three times the fixed government salaries of doctors, lawyers and professors. Partly it's the surreal feel of Castro's regime, liberalized during the mid-to-late '90s, but rife with uncertainty. A private, home-based restaurant, legal today, might be closed up tomorrow.Tattlin lives in relative splendor, in a big house with plenty of servants. Her book takes its shape from the notes she took - short, often funny, often poignant, vignettes of daily living, from obtaining decent food (not at the state-run market), to Spanish lessons for the family and dancing lessons for her daughter and the servants' unwillingness to discipline her son or even tell her of infractions, like urinating in the library wastebasket. She describes the pleasures and hazards of travel in Cuba, hosting dinner parties for generals who know where the bodies are buried and, once, for Fidel - a frenzy of paranoid government prep with a curiously flat finale. Most absorbing are Tattlin's connections with local people. She becomes involved in the lives of her servants, though she's near the end of her stay before she sees where several of them live. Slowly bits of their lives emerge - a stint as political prisoner or government spy, a sick wife, a knack for practical solutions. Tattlin befriends her children's teachers, area artists and intellectuals; ex-revolutionaries. She describes film festivals, spontaneous generation of long lines for rare items, back alley purchases, Santeria rites Over the years, some of the people she befriends disappear to America.Her family appears only in glimpses, though Tattlin is free with her own feelings about things, from the complex categorization of skin color to a request for visa sponsorship to the discovery of a minor theft. Tattlin is funny, frank and warm. She doesn't want to be taken advantage of, though she quite understands why it's inevitable. Her anecdotal view of Cuba shows a witty and canny observer and her book should interest anyone curious about that shuttered island.

About once a year I find a book good enough to read at one sitting. This is my book for the year. As the author of four books on Cuba, I'm intimately familiar with the island and perhaps for this reason found Tattlin's often humorous and always insightful masterpiece not only deliciously engaging, but also accurately reflective of the sultry sadness and spirited sensuality of a nation that after five decades of social experiment exists in its own irresistibly surreal twilight zone. She pulls no punches in laying the blame for Cuba's problems on the desk of the CEO. Tattlin shows us some eyebrow-raising insights into Fidel's personality and the sycophantic relationship with his inner entourage that she gleaned through several personal meetings she and her husband had with him. Despite her privileged lifestyle in Havana, she shows herself immensely versed in local realities and equally empaphetic to the plight of Cubans faced with their daily lucha (fight). My favorite anecdote, so succingly meaningful, regards the dead tarantula that Tattlin's two children had preserved in a jar for two weeks. When the spider suddenly comes to life, "It's a miracle!" Tattlin says to Miguel and Lorena, who were watching bemused. "Two weeks without air, food, or water." Miguel and Lorena shrug: "Es una tarantula cubana." Alas, her attempts to hide her identity (Isadora Tattlin is a pseudonym) and that of her husband (referred to irritatingly as an "X....ian") won't have fooled Cuban state security. A splendid edition to anyone's Cuba collection.

I've never been to Cuba. But now I feel like I have been -- and in very good company. Isadora Tatlin is the funniest, most observant, writer. Her accounts of scrounging for food to serve her family, exploring the architecture of old Havana, attending the art exhibitions of dissident artists, are all detailed and droll and, at times, very touching. I really loved this book. I've already passed it on to one Cuban-American friend who agrees with me wholeheartedly. Tatlin's account of what it's like to have Fidel Castro to dinner -- for my money -- is a comic masterpiece.