One Hundred Bottles

annette — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 08:00:00 +0000

An intensely vivid and riveting story of abuse, pain, honesty, erotica and discovery-this combination of words may not sound appealing, but the provocative and imaginative novel of these topics woven together creates a graphic fall from the literary world into our laps of reading desire. Crafted by Ena Lucía Portela, One Hundred Bottles is the story of a young woman named Z, who is incidentally an amazing storyteller (as well as a reluctantly educated person) and who leads us through her story while trying to find meaning behind her experiences. Given her challenging background, Z delivers a step by step account of her life (with creative backstory included) and you hope she will end up a champion. Z faces what seems the most challenging of all living through an unlucky survivorship; however, she keeps moving along through life, and author Portela puts you, the reader, right next to her. You feel the slaps, you feel the insults, and you breathe a sigh of relief with her at the climax.

Educated at the University of Havana, Ena Lucía Portela brings her life to fiction and brilliantly sets her story in the historic rocky era of Cuba in the early 1990s. All characters seek a chosen lifestyle and all are survivors; depending on their current resources, people enter and spin through Z's life while their own tales turn-and none are left unexplained.

Although she is called "stupid", Z is curious and insistent. Her friends and support range from her priest to a lesbian mystery author. At certain points in reading One Hundred Bottles, you feel like you are reading strictly a whodunit sort of detective novel, but actually the author (and best friend of Z) writes the detective novel based on Z's retelling of actual real events in her section of the world. Brilliantly juxtaposed, the work keeps you engrossed; at times powerfully violent, the novel reminds you that this is what a certain group in a certain culture experienced during this time; if a reader is intimate with abuse or violence, he or she may identify with these parts, but redemption triumphs and allows readers to breathe deeply a sigh of relief.

Published originally in Spanish in 2002, this novel holds up. Reminiscent of Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and Brando Skyhorse's The Madonnas of Echo Park, One Hundred Bottles brings the reader a culture delightfully retold through the eyes of a woman who remarkably survives. As well, the story offers hope and fulfillment, both necessary traits for living in today's world.

Written by: Carolyn Espe, February 18th 2011

Ruins

admin — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:23:00 +0000

By Achy Obejas

Akashic Books

Upon reading Ruins, I was struck by the urgency of the content. Set in post-revolutionary Cuba the characters exist in a state of stagnant ideologies and hopes. Throughout the narrative Achy Obejas exposes a world that is startlingly familiar, one in which political values change according to the realities in which they exist. Obejas is an award-winning novelist and poet who translated Junot Diaz’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel into Spanish. A native of Havana, Obejas’ Cuba is both fantastic and forcefully real; this combination is precisely what makes her narrative so potent.

The protagonist of Ruins is a man who came of age during the Cuban Revolution in 1959. Usnavy has never let the patriotic ideals that were indoctrinated during youth escape his aging heart. Named both tragically and comically after the U.S. Navy ships moving in and out of the port of Havana, he has never been able to evade the “long shadow of the north” that haunts his life.

Usnavy lives in a dilapidated house with a wife and a daughter that have resorted to eating torn up carpet seasoned like meat in place of the real thing. Despite their real need for American currency, Usnavy refuses to participate in the growing dependence on the U.S. His dreams of Cuba’s past often conflict with his families hopes for the future. With more and more friends taking the dangerous journey to the shores of Miami, he does not merely give in. Usnavy fervently rejects the implication that America could hold anything greater than his beautiful revolutionary homeland.

Usnavy’s preoccupation with the past is manifested in his obsession with an antique lamp passed down to him from his deceased mother. The lone source of light in their otherwise dismal room, the lamp’s absurd garishness becomes a source of resentment for the two women in Usnavy’s life. Transfixed by the illuminated images of Africa created by the stained glass, he is content to live through the unpleasantries of life in post-revolution Cuba. It is not until the discovery of another lamp similar to his precious family heirloom that Usnavy begins to experience the desires that many of his fellow compañeros have expressed through their preoccupation with American wealth.

Obejas’ Ruins is full of contradictions that bring to light the complications of real life. She addresses the fluidity of values and ideologies when a young man returns from Miami as a woman, or when Usnavy’s role as caretaker is subverted when his wife’s resourcefulness saves the family. As time passes the hopes and dreams of a nation sway accordingly. Those who are lost in the past find themselves clinging to values that no longer hold the meaning they once did. Ultimately, Obejas reveals that political ideologies are as fluid as anything else, and they are not immune to the wearying effects of old age, a sentiment that resonates today.

Written by: Lizzy Shramko, May 13th 2009