Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy
Carlos Eire
Published 2003
National Book Award for Nonfiction
As Cuba opens its doors to international travelers and the U.S. eases travel restrictions there has been a flurry of interest in this long closed island nation. Waiting for Snow in Havana backtracks to a pre-Castro Cuba as Carlos Eire recounts his boyhood in Cuba and the abrupt ending in 1959 when he, his brother and 14,000 other Cuban children were airlifted from Cuba to Miami. Carlos and his brother were not to see their mother again for several years when she was finally allowed to leave Cuba. The book alternates between comical, typical boy shenanigans in what Carlos remembers as an island paradise and the sadness of a country and childhood that changed virtually overnight.