Cuban American historian Ada Ferrer (Cuba: An American History) delves into her family's experiences in her powerful, bittersweet memoir, Keeper of My Kin. Through a combination of archival research, personal experience, and dozens of family letters, Ferrer recounts her immigration as a young child to the United States with her mother, her life in the States, her family's deep and lasting connections to Cuba, and the troubled life of her older half-brother Poly, who initially stayed behind. While Ferrer's narrative is a parallel accounting of two children's lives--one with American advantages and one without--it is also a haunting reflection on storytelling, who creates narratives, and who gets to decide whose story is worth telling.
Ferrer weaves together her experiences of childhood in the U.S. with stories of her extended family--grandparents, tías, innumerable cousins--back in Cuba. She portrays the triumphs and challenges of Fidel Castro's regime, linking well-known historical events to her family's particular narrative: for example, Poly's journey from Cuba to Florida during the 1980 Mariel Boatlift. She writes tenderly of her father's late-in-life, prolific correspondence with his son, Juan José, and of her own eventual trip to Cuba to meet Juan José and his family. Ferrer also points out the complications of visiting Cuba on a tourist visa and as a historian; though her blood and family history tie her to the island, paperwork has often made it complicated for her to visit.
In some ways, Ferrer's memoir is an exploration of the guilt she has carried for many years, knowing that Poly's story turned out so radically different from hers, partly because she grew up in the U.S. But she explores the effects of both chance and choice, the weight her mother carried due to her children living in two different countries, and Poly's complicated experiences as a young man in Cuba and the U.S. She recounts his issues with education and employment, his persistent mental health struggles, as well as her mother's efforts to help him. Ferrer admits the difficulty of reconciling Poly's story with her own, but she also points to her (and his) experiences as a wellspring for her career as a historian writing about both her homelands.
Sprinkled with family photos and excerpts from letters, Keeper of My Kin is a poignant tribute to the bonds of familial love across history, geography, and political and personal challenges. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams
Shelf Talker: In this memoir, Cuban American historian Ada Ferrer delves into her family's complicated history.