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Learning to Die in Miami: Confessions of a Refugee Boy (Carlos Eire, 2010)
BY: Denis Haack |
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The cruelties of the Nazis are well known, and it is just as well since they must never be repeated. The cruelties of the Marxists seem less rooted in our collective consciousness, but that is not because Communism was kinder than National Socialism. Both ideologies extracted more than their share of bloodshed and both must be remembered as experiments in social engineering that reduced human beings to the status of mere objects. Nazism is by and large past, except for the occasional skinheads for whom brute power has become a god. Communism however, still remains in power, in the collective famine known as North Korea and in the isolated island that resides a mere 90 miles off the coast of Florida known as Cuba.
In 1962, three years after Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba, over 14,000 unaccompanied children were flown out of Cuba to the United States. Though life had its difficulties under the dictatorship of Batista, the people of Cuba could see that life under Castro would be far worse and wanted to get out. Some parents were able to follow their children into exile later, but many were not. The harsh fragmentation of families this exile represents is one of the bitter legacies of the Castro regime in particular, and of Marxism in general.
One of the children on board the airplanes flying from Cuba to America was an eleven year-old boy named Carlos Eire. Today he is the T. Lawrason Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University, and author of two memoirs that tell the story of his part in the airlift known to history as Operation Peter Pan. His parents thought Carlos and his brother would be able to return relatively soon, as soon as Castro’s Communist government was overthrown. That, of course, was not to be. Years later Carlos’ mother was able to join her sons in America, but the boys never saw their father again.
Eire begins the story of his forced exile in Waiting for Snow in Havana (2003), a brilliant memoir that reads like a novel and is all the more poignant for being a true story. Now, Eire continues his story in Learning to Die in Miami (2010). Like all exiles, he discovered that if he was to begin a new life in a new place he first must die, to Cuba and to a past that was no more and could never be recovered.
Eire tells a story that is as painful as it is hopeful, a narrative that is unlike anything I have ever experienced and yet accessible because it partakes of the essential vitality of what it means to be human in a badly broken world. It is a story that needed to be told. And it is a story that must never be forgotten.
Questions:
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Source:
Recommended book: Learning to Die in Miami: Confessions of a Refugee Boy by Carlos Eire (New York, NY: Free Press; 2010) 304 pages.
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Denis Haack
Denis is the author of The Rest of Success: What the World Didn’t Tell You About Having It All and has written articles for such journals as Reformation & Revival Journal, Eternity, Covenant, and World. He holds a Master of Arts in Theological Studies degree from Covenant Seminary in St. Louis.
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Unapologetic: Why Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense (Francis Spufford, 2013)
Truth, Reality and Facts
Religion for Atheists: A Non-believers Guide to the Uses of Religion (Alain de Botton, 2012)
Ideologies and Idolatries
A very comfortable alienation
Popologetics: Popular Culture in Christian Perspective (Ted Turnau, 2012)
Sorrow & Blood: Christian Mission in Contexts of Suffering, Persecution, and Martyrdom (Edited by William Taylor, 2012)
The Juvenilization of American Christianity (Thomas E. Bergler, 2012)
Sharing God’s Passion: Prophetic Spirituality (Paul Hedley Jones, 2012)
Travels in Siberia (Ian Frazier,2010)
Notes From Toad Hall Gift List 2012
When Life Goes Dark (Richard Winter, 2012)
The Psychopath Test (Jon Ronson, 2011)
Some who came before
The Yellow Lady Slipper (excerpt:The Exact Place)
Bad Religion (Ross Douthat, 2012)
Heroine Addiction: Jane Austen’s Sinful Character
Abraham Kuyper (Richard Mouw, 2011)
Portraits of a Radical Disciple (Christopher Wright, 2011)
Three Theories of Everything (Ellis Potter, 2012)
The Book Thief (Markus Zusak, 2005)
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This year spring came late to southern Minnesota, and when it arrived it brought chilly temperatures, cloudy skies, and lots of rain. Whether it is because of these factors or something entirely different I don't know, but 2013 has turned out to be The Year of the Morel. If you have never sampled these delicious mushrooms, you are in for a treat. We've found them on more than one walk in the woods, and so feel we have had a special opportunity to experience one of the wonders of creation.
Morels, goldfinches, a well crafted film, an iris bursting into bloom, a chance for an unhurried conversation in a safe place--such glimmers of hope help us flourish as persons in this broken world. These are the sort of things we are concerned with at Ransom. Thanks for visiting.
Denis & Margie Haack
Anita Gorder
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