RIYL Cuban Characters

Bernardo, Anilu. Fitting in

Summary: A collection of short stories about Cuban-American girls "coming of age and coming to terms with their cultural identity."..

Bernardo, Anilu. Jumping off to freedom

Summary: Courage and desperation lead fifteen-year-old David and his father to flee Cuba's repressive regime and seek freedom by taking to the sea on a raft headed for Miama, Florida.

Bernardo, Anilu. Loves me, Loves me not

While trying to win the attention of a high school basketball star who already has a girlfriend, Maggie, a Cuban American, learns painful lessons about romantic young love.

Brouwer, Sigmund. Hurricane power

After he moves to Miami, seventeen-year-old David, who is a fast runner, gets invited to join the Hurricanes' track team, but he soon finds himself mixed up in a mystery involving a toy gun, a Cuban American boy, and a gang called the Black Roses.

Calcines, Eduardo F. Leaving Glorytown: one boy's struggle under Castro

Biography. Calcines’ grandmother told him that the world forgot the Cuban people after Fidel Castro took power, and for many Americans today that is still true. This is a rare look at Cuban life from 1959 to 1969, when Calcines’ family managed to emigrate.

Cardenas Angulo, Teresa Letters to my Mother

A young African-Cuban girl is sent to live with her aunt and cousins after the death of her mother and begins to write letters to her deceased mother telling of the misery, racial prejudice, and mistreatment at the hands of those around her.

Corbett, Sue Free Baseball

Angry with his mother for having too little time for him, eleven-year-old Felix takes advantage of an opportunity to become bat boy for a minor league baseball team, hoping to someday be like his father, a famous Cuban outfielder. Includes glossaries of baseball terms and Spanish words and phrases.

Dole, Mayra Lazara Down to the Bone

Laura, a seventeen-year-old Cuban American girl, is thrown out of her house when her mother discovers she is a lesbian, but after trying to change her heart and hide from the truth, Laura finally comes to terms with who she is and learns to love and respect herself.

Doval, Teresa de la Caridad Girl like Che Guevara

It is January 1982: Che Guevara is a national icon; bread lines curl around Havana corners; and 16-year-old Lourdes Torres is leaving her sheltered urban existence, bound for a camp in the nationalized tobacco

Engle, Margarita Tropical secrets: Holocaust refugees in Cuba

escaping from Nazi Germany to Cuba in 1939, a young Jewish refugee dreams of finding his parents again, befriends a local girl with painful secrets of her own, and discovers that the Nazi darkness is never far away.

Engle , Margarita The surrender tree : poems of Cuba's struggle for freedom

Cuba has fought three wars for independence, and still she is not free. This history in verse creates a lyrical portrait of Cuba.

Ferrer, Caridad. Adios to my old life

Ali Montero, 17, has been brought up by her father, a music professor in Miami, to be a good Cuban American girl as well as a talented singer and guitarist. But he's not pleased when she makes the finals in a nationwide TV competition to find the "next Latin superstar."

Ferrer, Caridad It’s not about the accent

(character decides to portray herself as half-Cuban, later finds out her great-grandmother was actually Cuban) Caroline Darcy decides to explore--and exploit--her distant Cuban ancestry when she goes away to college, claiming to be half-Cuban, calling herself "Carolina," and dying her blond hair Havana Brown, but soon faces profound consequences.

Flores-Galbis, Enrique Raining Sardines

Best friends Enriquito and Ernestina save their Cuban village from a predatory landowner.

Garcia, Christina I wanna be your shoebox

(character is Cuban/Japanese/Jewish) Thirteen-year-old, clarinet-playing, Southern California surfer, Yumi Ruiz-Hirsch, comes from a complex family--her father is Jewish-Japanese, her mother is Cuban, and her parents are divorced--and when her grandfather Saul is diagnosed with terminal cancer, Yumi asks him to tell her his life story, which helps her to understand her own history and identity.

Garcia, Pelayo Pete From Amigos to Friends

When the Cuban Revolution causes indiscriminate disruption throughout their country in 1959, three teenage boys are forced to grow up earlier than anyone could expect.

Hijuelos, Oscar Dark Dude

In the 1960s, Rico Fuentes, a pale-skinned Cuban American teenager, abandons drug-infested New York City for the picket fence and apple pie world of Wisconsin, only to discover that he still feels like an outsider and that violent and judgmental people can be found even in the wholesome Midwest

Lupica, Mike Heat

Pitching prodigy Michael Arroyo is on the run from social services after being banned from playing Little League baseball because rival coaches doubt he is only twelve years old and he has no parents to offer them proof.

Mead, Alice Swimming to America

Eighth grader Linda Berati struggles to understand who she is within the context of her mother's secrecy about the family background, her discomfort with her old girlfriends, her involvement with the family problems of her Cuban-American friend Ramon, and an opportunity to attend a school for "free spirits" like herself.

Nixon, Joan Lowery Playing for keeps

Summary: On a Caribbean cruise, sixteen-year-old Rosie meets a teenage Cuban baseball player seeking political asylum in the United States and tries to help him escape a charge of murder.

Triana, Gaby Cubanita

17-year-old Isabel, eager to leave Miami to attend the University of Michigan and escape her overprotective Cuban mother, learns some truths about her family’s past and makes important decisions about the type of person she wants to be.

Veciana-Suarez, Ana The flight to freedom

Summary: Writing in the diary which her father gave her,

thirteen-year-old Yara describes life with her family in Havana, Cuba,in 1967 as well as her experiences in Miami, Florida, after immigrating there to be reunited with some relatives while leaving others behind.

Winick, Judd Pedro and me

In graphic art format, describes the friendship between two roommates on the MTV show "Real World," one of whom died of AIDS.