In beautiful, knowing prose, Achy Obejas opens up a fascinating world of exotic wordplay, rich history, and vibrant emotions. Ale is finally lured back to Cuba to make amends with the ancestral demons still lurking there to translate her father’s troubling youthful experiences into the healing language of her Cuban American heart. Enlightened by a whole new vision of her past and her culture, Ale makes her way back through San Jos history, uncovering new fragments of truth about the relatives who struggled with their own identities so long ago.

They are conversos who converted to Christianity during the Spanish Inquisition. When her own job as an interpreter takes her back to Cuba, Ale is initially unmoved at the import of her return until she stumbles upon a surprising truth: the San Jos s, ostensibly Catholics, are actually Jews.

Though Ale was intrigued by the specter of Havana that colored her life as a child, her fascination eventually faded in her teens until all that remained was her profound respect for the intricacies of the Spanish language and the beautiful work her father did as a linguist and translator. Ale grew up in Chicago amid a close community of refugees who lived with the hope that one day Castro would fall and they could return to their Cuban homes. Fearing the conflict and strife that bubbled up in the streets all around the new family, her parents took Ale and fled to the free shores of America. On New Year’s Day 1959, as Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba, Alejandra San Jos was born in Havana, entering the world through the heart of revolution.

Achy obejas memory mambo