Jubana! Read Online Free PDF

byline.
    Meanwhile, Hollywood movie stars and assorted celebs and politicos were flocking to our island to play: Ava Gardner, Frank Sinatra, Groucho Marx, Dorothy Lamour, Maurice Chevalier, Eartha Kitt, George Raft, Edith Piaf, Cab Calloway, Dorothy Dandridge, Tony Martin, Jennifer Jones, David Selznick, Marlon Brando, Pablo Picasso, and Jesse Owens (who raced against—and beat—a horse). Hemingway was in his Old Man and the Sea prime, Winston Churchill couldn’t get enough of our posh casinos, country clubs, or cigars. And the Mafia, well, you saw Godfather II, right? The $14 million Hotel Riviera, for example, was financed mostly by the Cuban government for Meyer Lansky. (They had a floor show in the Copa Room headlined by Ginger Rogers. Lansky noted that “Rogers can wiggle her ass, but she can’t sing a goddamn note.”)
    Papi said Cuba was a corrupt place under the crooked, ruthless dictator General Fulgencio Batista’s rule, and corrupt before him, but it was an alluring, sexy, prosperous, lush, advanced, beguiling, laissez-faire kind of corrupt. You know, fun corrupt. American musical acts went there to play all the time. That’s why Cuban Americans of my parents’ generation think it’s hilarious that the 1997 Buena Vista Social Club CD was such a hit in this country, as if los Yanquis were just discovering the sinuous beauty and earthy soulfulness of our native music.
    I asked my mom’s best friend, Eliana, what she thought of the record, and she said, “Dat cheet? Dat was, like, música del campo [country music]. Tacky. Een Cuba I leesehn-ed to Nahpkeen Kohl.” (She always called him Napkin.)
    Mami used to listen to “The Christmas Song” crooner, too, until she met Nat King Cole one day at a baseball game in Havana. She ran over to him, confident and full of teenaged life, all freckles and bosoms and red lipstick, and breathlessly asked for an autograph.
    Cole slowly sized her up from his seat, paused, frowned, and condescendingly said, “No.”
    Mami’s never forgiven a no from ANYbody.
    â€œWow,” she sputtered. “Joo are really an ASShole.”
    She’s hated Nat King Cole’s guts ever since.
    Â 
    Following the earlobe trauma, the other key thing that happens in early Jubanahood is that by age two or so, people stop feedingyou just plain old leche and start with the café con leche at breakfast. You know how they say that one drop of black blood in a glass of white milk makes you racially a chocolate milk? Well, one drop of espresso in a glass of heavily sugared hot leche makes you wired. It permanently alters your already nervous system and turns you into a caffeine and sugar addict with an attitude. (So the next time you ask yourself, “What is it with these fucking Cubans?”—remember the café con leche. )
    The trick about café con leche is that it’s initially soothing but ultimately stimulating. Soon after I started drinking it every morning I began speaking in whole sentences. I haven’t been able to stop myself ever since. When my parents had parties, which was constantly, I’d sit on the living room’s cool Spanish tile floor in a pair of black ballet tights and nothing else (except the jewelry, of course) and explain the meaning and causes of thunder and lightning. Cuba’s known to have hurricanes every now and then, so I knew this would be a big hit for my audience.
    â€œEn resumidas cuentas, todo esto tiene que ver con fuerzas negativas y fuerzas positivas,” I commenced. “Como la vida misma.” The bottom line is that it all comes down to negative forces and positive forces. Like life itself.
    The well-heeled invitados were muy impressed. They approvingly sipped their daiquiris, Bacardi Cuba Libres, and Manischewitz.
    â€œShe looks so much like David,” people always told Mami, “you could dress her in a white lab coat and send her to the hospital.