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Cuba Diaries: An American Housewife in Havana | 
 enlarge | Author: Isadora Tattlin
Publisher: Broadway
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
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You Save: $13.94 (100%)
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Rating:  27 reviews
Sales Rank: 273301
Media: Paperback
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.9
ISBN: 0767914848
Dewey Decimal Number: 972.9123064092
EAN: 9780767914840
ASIN: 0767914848
Publication Date: May 13, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Isadora Tattlin was accustomed to relocating often for her husband’s work. But when he accepted a post in Cuba in the early 1990s, she resolved to keep a detailed diary of her time there, recording her daily experiences as a wife, mother, and foreigner in a land of contraband. The result is a striking, rare glimpse into a tiny country of enormous splendor and squalor. Though the Tattlins are provided with a well-staffed Havana mansion, the store shelves are bare. On the streets, beggars plead for soap, not coins. A vet with few real medical supplies operates on a carved mahogany coffee table in a Louis XIV–style drawing room. The people adore festivity, but Christmas trees are banned. And when Isadora hosts a dinner party whose guest list includes Fidel Castro himself, she observes the ultimate contradiction at the very heart of Cuba. Vividly capturing Cuba’s simultaneously appalling and enchanting essence, Cuba Diaries casts an irresistible spell and lifts the enigma of an island that is trapped in time, but not in spirit.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 22 more reviews...
 Entertaining, nice read.... July 2, 2008
Allie (Los Angeles, CA)
Certainly not as historical as the Diary of Anne Frank, but a great summer read to depict Cuba in more modern times.
 "Isadora" Should be Embarrassed May 8, 2008
L. Gifford (Northern New England)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is one of the worst books I've ever read. Rather than "an American housewife" in Havana, it should be touted as "a capitalist consumer" in Havana. Tattlin's view is one of privilege and naivete, which would have been okay had the book been creative, informative or engaging. Sadly, it was full of complaints, misunderstandings and an unnecessary over-protectiveness. As an American who also lived in Cuba, Tattlin is the type of person I dreaded there the most, the modern day colonialist.
It makes me wonders who "Tattlin" knew in the publishing world to get a book deal.
Havana without it June 29, 2007
I. Figueras (philadelphia, pa)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Last Christmas I send this book (Cuba Diaries...etc) to a friend from my office as a gift. Six months later we had an exchange on this book and we both agreed that it was poorly written. Isadora Tatlin is nothing but what the title of her book claims: An American housewife who happens to be of all places, in Havana. We understood the fact of her being just another fatty wife more concerned with taking their kids to the mall on Sunday than guiding them through the intricacies of life in a third world, more or less communist country. She failed to grasp the esence of life in Havana. In short she is, precisely, the best example of a our failed foreing policy toward the island.
 A Reader's Escape to Cuba December 4, 2006
Richard Ranger (Valdez AK)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I recently re-read Isadora Tattlin's "Cuba Diaries" to see if the magic of the first reading still held true. It does. This is an extraordinary book. Travel essay literature succeeds or fails by whether the author opens a doorway to discovery for a reader, or darkens that doorway with his or her shadow. Put another way, travel essay literature fails when the sound of the author's voice and the artiifce of the author's perceptions overpower the place that is the subject of the book. Travel essay literature succeeds when the noises and the smells of the place become real for the reader, and the story is the author's story about the place rather than the author's story about herself.
In "Cuba Diaries", Isadora Tattlin succeeds brilliantly. She never pretends to tell the reader all there is to know about Cuba. Instead, she strikes a balance that is as difficult to achieve as it is compelling once achieved. She tells you what she saw and what she heard, not as metaphor but as experience. She never forgets -- nor lets the reader forget -- that her language, her two passports, and her affluence are realities that present certain limits to full understanding of the Cuban experience as the Cubans she encounters know that experience. But her honesty about who she is, coupled with her skill as a reporter, allow the story of her family's sojourn in Cuba to come alive. Cuba unfolds with the intimacy of letters home from your favorite sister. Two feral cats are adopted to become beloved pets, the author has her purse stolen in broad daylight, Castro comes to dinner, preceded by an entourage of security men. Isadora Tattlin's scene descriptions convey the vividness and richness of details found in the corners of a large Renaissance painting. Lizards climb walls in the nighttime, algae forms in the swimming pools where her children take instruction, cuts of meat ooze blood in market counters, the pungent perfumes of the tropics mix with diesel exhaust. But among the most effective of those details are those she presents by way of documenting the tasks of managing a household and caring for her children. The things that cannot be purchased in Cuba, or that can only be found a day or so at a time in the diplomat's commissary; the threadbare facilities of the providers of medical care; the restaurants without menus; the hotel rooms without water; the collapsing masonry of the buildings of old Havana, including the cracked floors of the studio where her little girl studies dance.
Beyond the politics of Cuba and the politics about Cuba is the reality of an island country of heartbreaking beauty and hardship, and of people who daily confront that reality with pride, perseverance, pain and song. Isadora Tattlin's book will not tell you everything you may wish to know about that reality. But this book will introduce you to the reality of the place called Cuba, and I think you will find the introduction unforgettable.
Simple, funny, effective, informative and very readable November 15, 2006
citizen_1906 (Singapore City, Singapore)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
There are far too many 'doom and gloom' books on Cuba (not unlike books that discredit the entire Chinese Communist movement). In the Cuban diaries, the writer does not attempt to judge, but simply documents all her observations and her personal experience in the 4 years she spent there, and leaves the judgement for the reader. In one part, she describes an inccident of teenage car theives and explains the crime without including her opinion. Yes, her concerns and worries are small in contrast to the greater picture of Cuba, and yes, many might feel that she is just a housewife, her role of little or no political significance. However, she had never tried to play up her character nor promote herself to be anymore than who she is. I feel that those who thinks her experience are not worthy of attention have missed the point.
I mean, Cuba, like all country, has it's upside and downside. Isabella complains about the downside but she didn't fail to acknowledge the upside. She talks about what a relief to spend a week in Miami, then what a relief to be back in Cuba. I've read a number of books describing communist countries - and they often focus on how miserable lives are in those 'god-forsaken' countries. Isabella's book does not pass a verdict, it simply offers a tiny glimpse through her little life and those few years she spent there.
Still, while it's a good read, I won't say it's book of the year or whatever - I really would have given it 4 1/2 stars but this function is not available. So I thought I'll give her 5 for a magnificant effort from a non-professional writer.
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