It’s sort of interesting that this book is not better, because the story has so much promise — a young, fairly naive, Mexican woman goes to Cuba in 1970 to teach ballet — and the author seems to be a skilled writer who knows a lot about Latin American politics (and writes wonderfully, and vividly, about ballet and bodies). I guess it’s hard to have perspective on your own life? but the book is a mess. No clear through-lines, lots of signalling to a big picture but no sense of what it really is, totally muddled notion of audience, purpose, and politics. I know that Cuba has long been a red-hot topic, politically, and was probably all the more so when this book was published in 2004, but it’s still astonishing that this book manages to be so empty as far as articulating any kind of position. Even as it tries to be the story of a young woman becoming more politically aware!
So instead, the focus becomes… her crummy boyfriend in NYC, and what will happen to their relationship? Except that’s obviously a train wreck, and there’s little effort to pretend otherwise. Also maybe this other guy she was sort of into in Mexico City? But that kind of contradicts the NYC boyfriend plot. How the ballet school is doing? But here she must confront how un-invested her (extremely self-absorbed) 20-year-old self was in the issue.
So then there’s a sort of amusing, because absurd, effort to just start throwing some stuff at the wall, narratively, to see if anything will stick (and then I met this guy and it was love at first sight but we only spent like 5 minutes together. Also did I ever tell you about how I was basically homeschooled for large chunks of my life?) And there are many brief asides where you’re like, wow, this person is really quite interesting, and has led a fairly fascinating life…but still, this book has no real center. It’s just a fairly episodic recollection of a six-month period.
Probably the most intriguing, to me, aspect of the book is that Guillermoprieto is quite forthright about how clueless and selfish she was as a young person, and she doesn’t really attempt to excuse or justify it. But neither does she say much about how one could have understood those events differently. Most obviously, when she writes about how the students at the school protested and demanded changes, and tried, unsuccessfully to enlist her to help. Or when, later, someone comes to New York and asks her to return, and she says no. Only now, she writes, does she realize how crushed the students must have been at her refusal. Which is a somewhat stunning claim — only now, you realize this?? — but also, so what?? There is no further discussion or reflection. I’m not saying there should be some kind of mea culpa or edifying moral lesson, but at the same time, I guess I do want there to be some kind of point?
So too, at moments, she will freely admit that she doesn’t remember various things. Or say that she wished she remembered them! Like, what they ate, or what they talked about, etc. But, well, she doesn’t. Again, you could make something of this, perhaps — reflect on how we make sense of the past, or the kinds of stories we tell about it. But this book does none of that.
I feel bad critiquing it (I don’t like being negative about books in general), but I was just so puzzled — why isn’t this book better? That I sort of needed to work out all the ways it was not good, to confirm for myself that I hadn’t missed something.
Kasia Reads 