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Tastes Like Cuba: An Exile's Hunger for Home | 
 enlarge | Authors: Eduardo Machado, Michael Domitrovich
Publisher: Gotham
Category: Book
List Price: $27.50
Buy New: $2.78
You Save: $24.72 (90%)
New (39) Used (24) from $0.75
Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 696874
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 368
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9 x 5.9 x 1.3
ISBN: 1592403212
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.597291
EAN: 9781592403219
ASIN: 1592403212
Publication Date: October 18, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New! May have ink mark on book edge and/or very light shelf wear
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Product Description
Tastes Like Cuba is the moving account of an exile searching for the identity he's lost and becoming someone else in the process.". An internationally acclaimed playwright, Eduardo Machado has grappled with questions of identity, loss and resistance throughout his life and work. He has more than any other playwright been able to convey the experiences of both the Cubans who chose to stay in Cuba and those who chose to leave. His fearless style and unabashed politicism in the face of dissent have made him a controversial figure to the Cubans and Americans on opposite sides of an intense conflict.
In his memories and in his more recent travels to Cuba, he has found that the most natural means of connecting with today s Cuban experience is through food. Machado says, When I taste something I haven t tasted in twenty years, I can t resist that connection to the past, to the conflict, to the identity that is mine. I know the feeling as I taste the flavor. There are no arguments, no political controversies, just the real sensation. If it s that complex, it must be Cuban.
To any exile, food represents not only the lost comfort of home, but the best chance to reclaim it. The stories of Machado s life from child of privilege in pre-Revolutionary Cuba; to exile in Los Angeles; to actor, director, playwright and professor in New York are interleaved with recipes for the meals that have enriched him. Every recipe has been updated for the modern home cook, enabling us to recreate the flavors of traditional Cuban dishes such as Machado s favorite roast pork and his grandfather s arroz con pollo, as well as the cuisine of necessity he encountered in 1960 s suburban America: Velveeta, SPAM, and other processed wonders. What emerges is a larger picture of what it means to be a Latino in America today. For anyone who has ever longed for a home, real or imagined, Tastes Like Cuba delivers a fascinating story of two worlds and one delectable life.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Tastes Like Cuba May 8, 2008
Lourdes Perdomo (SANTO DOMINGO, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC)
Just finished reading this story..It is fantastic, has all, loved it. I related to it. The food, the story, the pain of Cuba..
 Self-Absorbed and Annoying March 23, 2008
A Reader (London)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I have read many Cuban exile memoirs as well as those of Polish, Russian and other exiles groups. I also have several cookbook/memoirs about "old Cuba." This memoir is really one of the most irritating of the lot. Mr Machado goes on and on about loving his homeland and yearning for the taste of its food etc. That is fine. But he also goes on and on about his issues with his family - especially about his resentment towards his parents for sending him as a "Peter Pan" child to the US (Operation Peter Pan was a way for Cuban parents to send their unaccompanied children out of Cuba under the auspices of Catholic charities. This was at a time when parents in Cuba believed that their children would be rounded up and shipped to the Soviet Union to be "re-educated." Out of desperation, they were willing to send their children and then hoped to follow them). Mr Machado at one point rants about how they sent him and his 5 yr old brother just so they could make sure he grew up the way they thought he should. Well, one would wonder at any parent who willingly separated from their child for any other reason except to save them from a fate they viewed as horrible. This is just one example of a general trend to make rather vicious statements about his family, the US govt., other Cuban exiles (especially in Miami) and anyone else that disagrees with his view. It wasn't that gripping a memoir and the it wasn't really a great food related book. I would say that if you want a better Cuban exile memoir, try Pablo Medina's Exiled Memories or Gustavo Perez-Firmat's Next Year in Cuba. And if you really want have a useful cookbook that includes lots of memories and background flavor, then try A Taste of Old Cuba by Maria Josefa Lluria de O'Higgins or Memories of a Cuban Kitchen by Mary Urrutia Randelman. Both are excellent and authentic and filled with family photos and stories. Oh and the Nitza Villapol book(Cocina Criolla or Cocina al Minuto)from the 1950's which Mr Machado mentions is readily available in reprints -- you don't have to go secretly to Cuba and look in a second hand book stall.
A Tasty Treat February 1, 2008
Jan Comsky
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Eduardo Machado wrote a wonderful memoir of his early life in Cuba, to his young adult life in Miami and then Los Angeles, and then in his later years in New York and back in California.
His food recollections of his early days of Newspaper Soup, Bistec Empanizado, Arroz con Pollo, etc., he describes in such delicious detail.
His journey from Cuba to Hialeah and then to Miami pulled at my heart-strings. When him and his family got to Los Angeles, he wrote about many incidents. One in particular affected me very much. Him and his family went shopping at the Central Market in the valley. They were trying to find the foods they had grown up with in Cuba.
I could go on with this review, but in short, this book was one of the best memoirs in the food/immigration subjects.
Eduardo, thank you very much for a wonderful, tasty, and can't put it down read. Bravo!
From Cuba to the US and back again January 13, 2008
Robert C. Ross (New Jersey)
Eduardo Machado came to the US in 1961 as part of Operation Peter Pan, a program that transported about 14,000 children from Cuba to the United States after Batista fell. His grandfather tells the young Machado that his arroz con pollo "will taste just like Cuba." Machado thinks: "How do you make a meal taste like a place? I should have asked him directly. Instead, I spent the rest of my life looking for the answer."
I really enjoyed the story of how Machado finally reconciled his sense of loss for his homeland with the new life he created for himself in the United States. And, as a foodie myself, I enjoyed how he told his story with the help of food.
Example: Machado loved his grandmother's cafe con leche. "I was only 5 years old, but I knew one thing for sure. All I had to do was dunk the bread into the cup. Chew, sip and heaven in the morning was possible."
Fidel Castro destroyed the family: "The savior had become the tyrant. Fidel was now the source of all suffering for my family, more than Batista ever was." He says he felt contempt for his family, then guilt. Velveeta sandwiches he was forced to eat didn't help matters.
In the end Machado goes back to Cuba as a middle aged man, and makes peace with Cuba, his family and perhaps with himself.
He eats a tamale and wonders if it was as good as the ones he remembered as a kid. "And then it hit me. I didn't care. I didn't want to compare them. ... I no longer wanted to be the kind of Cuban that let what was lost get in the way of the beauty and the joy and life and food that was staring me in the face."
An interesting and insightful memoir, with some useful recipes for Cuban food.
Robert C. Ross 2008
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