Overview

"Fidel Castro´s guerrilla fighters defeated the ruthless Batista regime in 1959. His triumph drove hundreds of thousands of Cubans of all walks of life to flee the island to everywhere in the world, but especially to the United States. Stolen Dreams is an account of Pablo´s life as he was caught in the vortex of violence by two tyrannical governments. Pablo is torn between his dream of playing baseball abroad and his belief in freedom and justice for all. He and his friend risk their lives attempting to cross the dangerous Straits of Florida seeking freedom. As the Cuban patriot José Martí wrote, ""To change master is not to be free... Man loves liberty, even if he does not know that he loves it. He is driven by it and flees from where it does not exist."" Stolen Dreams is a tribute to all who have tried and, after six decades, are still attempting to flee to freedom to anywhere through any means."

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9781958363515

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Reviews

Stolen Dreams is a great storyline and well written. The [dialogue/interaction] between the characters is awesome and makes a better reading experience. A wonderful narrative. A recommended read. Chris W. Weston, author of A Baseball Man. A gripping story of life under the brutal regimes of Batista and Castro's Cuba, told with the authenticity of one with firsthand experience of what it was like. Highly Recommended. Michael Bright, English Professor / Emeritus Professor at Eastern Kentucky University. Author of Cities Built to Music. A lively and flowing narrative for the wider public about the final days of Fulgencio Batista's dictatorship in Cuba and the radical change that took place on the island in January 1959. The book describes in a testimonial tone and with abundant fictional notes the tense social situation of that time from the perspective of a family of rural owners, descendants of Spanish immigrants. This fine narrative written by Armando Gonzalez-Perez is ideologically in tune with other works about the time in which disenchantment becomes evident with the revolutionary changes whose authoritarianism and excesses triggered a dramatic and endless exodus, especially toward the United States. Armando Chavez-Rivera, Professor of Spanish American literature and culture, University of Houston-Victoria. Member of the North American Academy of the Spanish Language. Author of Dictionary of Provincialisms of the Island of Cuba. In Stolen Dreams, Armando Gonzalez-Perez strives to document pre- and post-revolutionary circumstances that brought forth disenchantment for many, as well as the still ongoing volition to migrate. By making his protagonist a promising baseball player, he introduces in the narrative a religious (tone) of sorts, since for countless islanders the sport supersedes the day-to-day, transporting them into a world of make-believe. Into a quasi-Neverland. Unlike, for instance, poet Luis Lorente, who in his '1968' explains that 'his passion, baseball, ' gave way to urgency at a time when 'from one day to the next, the stadium awakened transformed into huge cow pastures: firing ranges and training fields for members of the national militia, ' Gonzalez-Perezs hero never gives up on his quest. Intent on pursuing it in the United States, he takes to the sea with other dreamers, only to encounter death in the Gulf of Mexico. Gonzalez-Perezs narrative portrays emphatically a historical moment defined by anguish, desperation, disillusionment and impotence to encounter societal transformation that propelled thousands of Cubans to pursue freedom in other shores. In this sense, Stolen Dreams is at once a work of fiction and an accurate depiction of a dramatic period. The sagas tragic outcome, somewhat modulated by the survival of a single individual who lives to tell the tale, underscores appropriately the authorial objective to promote pathos and hence induce empathy for his characters and their ... destiny. Jorge Febles, Professor of Spanish American literature and culture. Emeritus Professor at Western Michigan University and Northern Florida University. Author of Revisiones: Lecturas heterogeneas de textos Cubanos.

Author Information

Armando González-Pérez received his doctorate from Michigan State University. He is an Emeritus Professor at Marquette University, where he taught for many years in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures. He has published a number of essential works in the field of Afro-Hispanic research, including many articles and the following books: An Essential Anthology of Afro-American Poetry; Critical Approaches to Afro-Cuban Literature; Afro-Cuban Theater of the Diaspora; Feminine Voices in Contemporary Afro-Cuban Poetry. He recently published an inspiring and heartwarming story of a golden retriever in search of love: Chance: From Turkey with Love.

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