Everyone Leaves

A classic story . . . delivers real news from Cuba in a lyrical way.NPR Available for a new generation, Wendy Guerras intoxicating and heartrending classica portrait of economically depressed post-revolutionary Cuba in the late 1970s, written as the diary of a young girl left behind by her parents and the state, who becomes caught in an acrimonious custody battle. It is 1978, and Nieve finds herself caught between the tides of her parents' turbulent relationship and a country in turmoil. To try to control her situation, she begins to record the intimate and harsh details of her life in her diary. Becoming her sole means of expression, the diary is her only constant and her only friend. From being torn from her mother, her mothers free-spirited and loving boyfriend, and her childhood city of Cienfuegos, to living with her abusive father, an alcoholic theater actor, to her forced induction as a Cuban revolutionary Pioneer, Nieve records in honest detail a life in which she is powerless as she loses the people and freedom she loves. Mirroring Wendy Guerras own adolescent experiences, Everyone Leaves is a vivid portrait of family life and social and political unrest in Castros Cuba that explores how the patriarchal and conformist notions of the Revolution ultimately betrayed the nation's women. Translated from the Spanish by Achy Obejas