Guajira, the Cuban Girl

“Here’s a memory, which like most memories is imperfect and subjective—collected long ago like a beach pebble and slipped into the pocket of my mind.” ~Michelle Obama

In Zita Arocha’s recent memoir, Guajira, The Cuban Girl, the reader finds a woman on the precipice of uncovering more about her beloved hometown of Guira, herself, and the truth of an assault that took place when she was just four years old, about to emigrate to the United States. The darkness of the room in her Cuban home where her beloved grandfather lay in state overnight did not reveal the perpetrator of such a horrible crime. There, a young four-year-old sat sobbing in a rocking chair next to her grandfather’s body. Though a young Zita told no one about it at the time, fond memories of smoke from her grandfather’s cigar persisted in mingling with the wretched torment of betrayal by someone unknown.

Once in the new country, the trauma surfaces and her mother takes her to have the demons exorcized by a Santeria priest. Santeria is an Afro-Cuban religion that incorporates some elements of Catholicism and some beliefs of the African Yoruba people—a belief system that some of Zita’s elders continued to practice.

As trauma would have it, the author is compelled to return to Cuba, feeling as if “…my compulsive neurotic heart is not ready to let her go.” A trip to Havana with some family members in May 1979 underscores the sinking reality that “the Cuba they knew was gone. Food had become scarce in Guira, relatives had been dying off, and Zita’s grandparents’ house was slowly sliding into decay.” As Zita asks questions of her elder relatives there, she is increasingly met with “No sé.” I don’t know. Memory is such an imperfect pebble, as Michelle Obama said. Later in her life as a journalist, Arocha returns to Cuba and finds herself at odds with a controlling Communist government that complicates her search for information on the Cuba she had been born into.

Though her journey to remember proves arduous, it provides a rich backdrop filled with culture, music, dichos (sayings), and of course politics with a dose of spies. Arocha has a gift for thoughtful writing and unwrapping a complicated timeline in clear discourse. This memoir consists of a prologue, an epilogue, and five chapters. Though the chapter titles don’t necessarily prepare the reader for what’s to come, the chapters are lively and full of intriguing information. A reader will feel the author’s ache for closure and strength to see this book come to fruition.

This is a book for those who enjoy stories of immigrant challenges. The confusion, pain, and promise of a new life in an unknown country is a timeless narrative.