cuba book havana revolution

The cover of Kushner's bookFor my second book, I read "Telex From Cuba" by Rachel Kusher. "Telex From Cuba" is a novel, and an employee at Idlewild suggested it to me when I bought "Havana: an Autobiography." I didn't buy the book (since hardcovers are so expensive) but I did find it at Bobst Library.
In "Telex From Cuba" Kushner wrote beautiful fiction about the buildup of tension in Havana and the Oriente Province until the explosion of the Cuban Revolution. In the pursuit of showing this, Kushner makes clear the hierarchy of 1950s Cuban society, in which most Cubans were near the bottom. The book is written more heavily from characters who are Americans living in Cuba in the ten or so years before the Revolution.
Kushner’s descriptions of Cuba are my favorite parts of “Telex.” One character, La Maziere, inhibits a red-light district of Havana and sees the city as a sticky, off-color version of Paris. Most of all I love Cuba through the eyes of K.C. Stites. On page 83 he describes a beach called Saetia as a “perfectly protected cove, with pink sand that sparkled like it had grown up diamonds in it, and reefs that were teeming with sea life.” K.C.’s experience in Cuba is driven by his childlike, physical relationship to his environment. He lives like a prince among beggars; with a paradise for his playground. While K.C.’s position seems morally repugnant in terms of Cuban political values, K.C.’s Cuba is beautiful in its simplicity. K.C. saw the harsh treatment of poor Cubans, but his narrow scope left no room for questioning. His ignorance of inequality is easily justified: "it wasn't right, but that's just the way it was."