Conversations with Cuba

the long version

"Conversations with Cuba is a street-level pilgrimage through a revolutionary society in transition. Not about politics or political personalities, this is the story of a passionate, struggling, sometimes discouraged but always proud country, told by citizens whose confidence in their revolution is both enduring and conflicted. It is located in the "special period," that ambiguous time in the 1990s characterized by the end of the Soviet Union's sustaining aid, a tightening of the punishing U.S. embargo, and Cuba's attempt at economic salvation through tourism - a Marxist culture seeking relief from food rationing through five-star hotels built with foreign investments."--BOOK JACKET. "Roberto, Neddie, Maria, Paulo, and the many others encountered in Conversations with Cuba - all eager to help a foreigner understand their passions and their suffering - reveal an extraordinary country and an uncommonly civil society shaped by patria, courage, tenacity, and a simultaneously critical and steadfast belief in their revolution."--BOOK JACKET.