Ruins [Paperback]

Set in 1994, when Cuba allowed its citizens to leave the country for the United States on anything that would float, Ruins, by Achy Obejas is a touching, close-up look at one man and his family and how he represents the life of the failed revolution of 1959. Like his countrymen, Usnavy Martin Leyva, named for the ships outside his mother's house near Guantanamo Bay, has always lived in the shadow of the United States, ninety tantalizing miles away. Unlike many of his contemporaries, however, Usnavy truly believes in the revolution and in the revolutionary songs sung by elementary school children.

An honest man working at a bodega where the shelves are bare and he has to tell people with ration cards that there is no bread or eggs or milk, he is fair to all, not rewarding friends at the expense of the rest of the poor. Though he has friends who have offered him a chance to escape with them to the US, he refuses, telling his best friend that "This is my dream." The brightest spot in Usnavy's life, apart from his daughter, is an enormous multi-colored dome lamp, a huge lamp anchored to the ceiling of his tiny house, so big that if the wind blew it, it would hit the side walls. Inherited from his mother, the lamp may be a Tiffany lamp, but Usnavy has never sought to find out.

On the night that his best friend departs for the US, Usnavy pauses on his way home where he see some of his neighbors scavenging at a collapsed construction site. Repelled by the activity, he is nevertheless hypnotized when he sees some colored glass winking at him from afar. Digging at the site of the beautiful glass reflections, he finds a small lamp, perhaps a Tiffany lamp, broken, but interesting, and possibly valuable enough to bring him a few dollars. His quest to fix the little lamp brings him into contact with glass artisans, and he gradually learns the history of Louis Tiffany and his relationship with the island. Tiffany was hired to decorate the Presidential Palace, but if he designed a lamp for the entrance it was never delivered. If it exists it would be the "Cuban Holy Grail."

Poet Achy Obejas creates a vibrant but sad picture of life among the Cuban populace through Usnavy, her Everyman. The emotions conjured in this book are intense, though the action is limited to the everyday life of Usnavy as he tries to live a real life within a revolutionary framework that he will not admit has failed him. Because of its intense personal focus, Usnavy's emotional struggle resembles drama more than typical fiction, and it is easy to imagine the six parts of this novel as six scenes from a play--one which ensnares its audience in the life of a man trying to keep believing in a dream which has failed, an experience which can only be evaluated in terms of classical tragedy. With its compressed imagery and symbolism, and its dark vision of life as it may still exist today, Ruins by Achy Obejas is a memorable addition to "Cuban noir." n Mary Whipple

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I don't know how Obejas manages to convey so much in so few pages. Probably it's her deft layering of images and metaphors, in this compact novel where Havana, Cuba is as much a character as anyone who speaks and moves. Usnavy is a 50-something true believer of the Cuban revolution, who is pushed beyond his limits, physically and spiritually, as he tries to stay true to his ideals against a tidal wave of defection, without betraying his family. All this and there's also an intriguing mystery/storyline about a lamp.
The characters and Cuba come to life in drenched, cinematic color. I strongly recommend this book for people who are interested in Latin America and the Caribbean, those who love a good tale, fans of international fiction, people who read Hemingway, fans of the Buena Vista Social Club, romantics, dreamers, and lovers of gripping and poetic writing.

Cuban writer Achy Obejas' novel Ruins is beautifully written, and an incredibly humanistic portrayal of one man's life in Cuba. Born before the Cuban revolution, and named after the U.S. Navy ships his mother can see from shore close to Guantanamo (a U.S. base already there since 1898), Usnavy is destined to live a life under shadow of the United States, both its lure and its warning. He never waivers from being a true believer in Cuba, and in all that Che Guevara promised the revolution would bring for the downtrodden of Cuba, but present times are testing his faith. Set in 1994, Usnavy reveals details of his life before the revolution, a life of degradation and hopelessness. His consequent embracing of the Revolution makes perfect sense: "It was because of the Revolution..that he could participate as a responsible member of society, as good as anyone else. It was because of the Revolution, he believed, that he wasn't dismissed as some hick from the hills. It was because of the Revolution that the lifeline on his hand had been rerouted, that he was born every day a New Man."

But Usnavy's life is very hard. He works every day at a bodega, fulfilling the ration cards of the people who line up for goods: "soap was scarce, coffee rare; no one could remember the last time there was meat. Sometimes all he had was rice, or worse, those detestable peas used to supplement beans, or when ground up, used as a coffee substitute." He lives in one room with his beloved wife and daughter, a room without windows and with a floor always wet with leaks. The communal bathroom of the tenement is found by the swarm of flies that envelop it, and with every rainfall the danger of the entire building collapsing threatens. Every day more and more Cubans take to the sea, escaping to America. When good friends leave, Usnavy becomes fearful that his own daughter will be next, drawn by the good fortunes of those who made it the ninety miles across the sea, and repelled by her father's own "salao", bad luck.

Usnavy owns a magnificent lamp, huge and glowing with varied colors of light from its many panels of decorative glass. Left to him as the only legacy from his mother, the lamp reminds Usnavy of all that is beautiful and possible in his world, and it connects him to the past, his mother and his Jamaican father (long ago disappeared at sea). But one day Usnavy makes a discovery that connects him and his lamp to the history of Cuba itself. Keeping the lamp and himself whole becomes a parable for the future of Cuba as Che dreamed of it: will the need for dollars overwhelm Usnavy or will the lifeblood of the lamp sustain him in his faith?

There are both incredible and quiet details in Ruins about daily life in Cuba: his daughter's dinner of a meat sandwich but it is only wool marinated in spices, "the texture of the wool had been transformed into what they all imagined steak was like, something tender and chewy"; Usnavy's three pairs of underwear, one to wear, one to wash while bathing, and one to keep ironed and folded in his small drawer; Usnavy's nightly domino games with his friends in the plaza; the constant shadow of the U.S., both in Cuban history (Hemingway and the U.S. love affair with everything Cuban), in products (the best appliances are U.S. made), and in politics (the embargo, of course, as well as the 1994 invasion of Haiti by the U.S.); young girls in lycra plying the streets at night for tourist dollars; outdoor dances and government parades; Socialist Committee-sponsored abuse of those Cubans waiting in line for visas to America; the constant gnaw of hunger; and Usnavy's long bike rides through the streets of Havana.

These details, woven around a compelling and surprising plot, make for a beautiful book. But this is much more than a great historical mystery set in Cuba or the compelling story of one man's spiritual conflict: this is a book that exposes the sufferings of the Cuban people, both before and after the Revolution. No matter what your politics, the book underscores both the brutality of life before Che and Castro (no romanticizing of the period when the Upper Classes lived like royalty and the lower classes were kept down like animals), and the sufferings and deprivations of life under Castro. Only misery and complete loss of hope could drive people numbering in the thousands to take to the sea in less than seaworthy crafts, braving ninety miles of sharks and storms, just to get away from Cuba.

Usnavy will never leave: he is in love with his country, bound up with its history, proud of its revolutionaries, and still holding hope for its future. Despite all that he suffers, we understand his attachment, it all makes sense as part and parcel of the man Obejas has created for us. Usnavy is a good man, he shares what little he has: "that was his way; whatever was available was for everyone equally. That was what he knew and understood." He is a quiet man with pleasure found in the riding of his bike, the playing of dominoes, watching the sea at night, and hearing the breathing of his wife and daughter while they sleep. He is the last man we would ever want to see hardened or bitter: his faith is too true, his needs so minimal, his efforts so sincere. He desires only to "die old and contented...in the soft dapple of a primal Antillean night."

This novel is an incredible affirmation of life and of the power of the survival instinct. We want Usnavy to find refuge from suffering and loss, and we fervently hope that he never sees himself betrayed by his Revolution but that he lives contented in a dream of it; that the huge lamp survives, its history and its power intact.

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