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Dirty Blonde and Half-Cuban: A Novel Kindle Edition
Based on the wildly popular, semi-autobiographical "Havana Honey" series published by Salon.com, Dirty Blonde and Half-Cuban is a gritty portrait of one woman's determination to infiltrate modern Cuba and find the father she has never known.
While on her search, privileged American Alysia Briggs ends up broke and alone in Havana. She's then forced to adopt the life of the jineteras -- educated Cuban women who supplement a desperate income by accommodating sex tourists.
With an eye for detail and a razor wit, Lisa Wixon relates Alysia's journey and creates a love song to Cuba, a heartfelt tribute to a resilient people facing soul-numbing poverty in a land where M.D.s and Ph.D.s earn $18 a month, and a pair of jeans costs twice as much.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarperCollins e-books
- Publication dateOctober 13, 2009
- File size1137 KB
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"...A compelling portrait of a woman coming to embrace her inner hybrid." -- Lynn Harris, The Washington Post (June 29, 2005)
"Ready to be discovered and devoured." -- Chicago Tribune (June 5, 2005)
"An eye-opening portrait of contemporary Havana. . . A bracing tale -- told with humor and welcome frankness, both political and sexual." -- Mark Rozzo, Los Angeles Times (July 3, 2005)
"...Scandalously entertaining..." -- National Public Radio (NPR), Fresh Air (June 20, 2005)
From the Back Cover
"By turns tender and terse, "Dirty Blonde and Half-Cuban" takes the reader on a young woman's dizzying, sometimes shocking journey to find her Cuban roots, and succeeds in creating a refreshingly cynical, unpatronizing window into life in modern Cuba.
"In a post-Hemmingway era, when too many authors instinctively romanticize Cuban women as passionate or hot-blooded, Wixon accurately presents a brutal, comic tale of the contemporary Cuban condition, where too many bright, beautiful women have replaced morality and doctorate degrees with desperation and prostitution.
"I know a lot of Cuban men on the island who will loathe this book for waving Cuba's semen-stained sheets for the world to see, and for that Wixon deserves a bodyguard, and a great big you go, girl."
----Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, author of "Dirty Girls Social Club" and "Make Him Look Good"
About the Author
Lisa Wixon has lived in Europe and Latin America and traveled to more than forty countries. She currently makes her home in New York City. Dirty Blonde and Half-Cuban is her first novel.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Dirty Blonde and Half-Cuban
By Wixon, LisaRayo
ISBN: 006072174XChapter One
I felt his hand on my bare shoulder, and it was all over.
In the oppressive August afternoon, the heat from another'stouch had the chilling effect of ice on a radiator. I'd been sitting alone, ina café in Havana near the former Hilton hotel -- the one ransacked byCommunists and renamed Habana Libre.
Free Havana.
The stacks of papers on my table were askew, some stained by thecafé con leche I chain-drink to keep my spirits up. He came at me from behind. I looked up into a tanned face and silky blue eyes framed by deep lines. Late fifties, I guessed, and not unattractive. He asked to sit. I shrugged casually. He asked if I spoke English. I nodded. Then he askedfor advice -- best bars, best beaches. My advice warranted a rum over ice,or so he measured, and he offered to buy me one.
I sighed. The papers were in a fantastic mess in front of me -- evidenceof my bootless investigation -- and, today, had not been revealing the cluesI'd hoped for. I piled them neatly. What the hell. A rum would be nice.
He smiles. I pretend, despite the mounting evidence to the contrary,that I'm a First World girl in a First World city, being offered a friendlydrink by an attractive man. That at the end of this exchange, we will tradebusiness cards and a flirtatious smile, and in a few days I'll find a messageon my cell phone and, who knows, there might be dinner and maybe amovie or a stroll and, you know, a date.
But I am not in the United States, my home, and he assumes he's notsparring with an equal, a woman of his socioeconomic rank; give or take afew rungs in either direction.
He rolls an ice cube on his tongue, momentarily losing himself to thepleasure of coolness amid the humid soup that is summertime Havana.Another drink, then another. He talks only of himself in determined pontification, and asks no questions of me. It's how he signals he's expectingto pick up the tab. This one, and the next.
I ask where he's from. "America," he says with a mixture of pride andcomplicity, as do all Yankees who sneak into Cuba.
"It's norteamericano," I say, playfully scolding. "We Cubans are offended that you claim the entire continent for yourselves. "He's not listening. Greedily, he takes in the size of my chest, the green jade ofmy eyes, the curve of one thigh crossed over the other.
"So," he says, leaning across the table. "I'm on the eleventh floor of theHabana Libre." He looks at me expectantly, while holding the check in hishand. "What'll it be?"
I can't blame him necessarily for the blunder. The café's bathroom mirror is not kind in its judgment; cracked and faded, it reflects myfreak-show appearance. These clothes, bought new in Washington, D.C.,three months ago, are frayed from wear and harsh soap and sun. I carrymy things in a plastic sack -- the Cuban girl's purse -- as my leather onehad been stolen months before. My body, once a healthy size eight, hasshrunk to a gaunt size four. Hipbones jut out for the first time in my life. Iam easily bruised. A Cuban diet does these things.
I am an American, in the sense that my passport says so, in that my university degrees and professional stints and taxes paid cement my belonging to her.
But I am Cuban. My first breath was Havana air, and my father -- as Irecently discovered -- circulates the blood of Cuba in his veins. I am aCuban-American. Like marbles in a tub, I noisily roll the moniker aroundin my head: Cuban-American. The hyphen is the fulcrum, the teetertotterthat swings up and down. Some days I'm more heavily Cuban. Onothers, I weigh in more American.
But today, this day, as the man's condom-covered cock slid betweenmy thighs and his chest spread my breasts, as he heaved over me, pushingand pulling and pushing hard still, and as I ran my nails hard down his spine, a painful reaction to the pleasure I didn't expect to feel, as his face crinkled and he collapsed and rolled over and dressed and threw American scratch at my knees, and as I gathered the bills from the floor and tucked them into my bra -- isn't that what prostitutes do? -- and as I took the elevator eleven floors to the lobby and walked past the smirking guards, and as I passed through the doors into the cruel sun of the afternoon, I realized that the teeter-totter had landed with a thud.
At that moment, I was only Cuban.
Continues...Excerpted from Dirty Blonde and Half-Cubanby Wixon, Lisa Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Product details
- ASIN : B000NJL732
- Publisher : HarperCollins e-books (October 13, 2009)
- Publication date : October 13, 2009
- Language : English
- File size : 1137 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 379 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,807,546 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #293 in General Cuba Travel Guides
- #1,798 in City Life Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #2,395 in Erotica Collections & Anthologies (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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- Reviewed in the United States on August 14, 2015Lisa Wixon's insight into the Cuban psyche is astounding! Really a good, entertaining as well as informative read.
- Reviewed in the United States on May 15, 2024I read this on Libby, and although it may not be for everyone, I found it interesting and educational and enjoyable. It is hard to believe that something so well written and so colourful is this authors first novel. I would definitely read something from her again period I think she has a definite future in historical fiction as she does it so well. Mature adults.
- Reviewed in the United States on May 13, 2014This book taught me about life in Cuba today in an entertaining way! It's sexy and well-written, reading like an autobiography.
- Reviewed in the United States on April 4, 2013The novel lists some of the problems happening in today's Cuba. But it is very careful not to blame the Communist dictatorship as the root cause of the more numerous problems Cuba has confronted in the last 52 years.
In fact, it praises some of Castro's crazy projects like ;bringing sick boys from the areas of Shernovil from the former Soviet Union;(while Cuban children don't have access to milk), and emphazising thay the Cuban countryside was dry and bleak because of the American embargo against the Castro dictatorship.
Many of these arguments are aberrant and completely disconnected from reality. Lisa should understand that prostitution is not a dignified way to live or to survive in ANY political system.
The year spent there was already sown with her engraved political ideas, typical of the non-Cuban leftists who are closer to Castro, than they are to the Cuban people!!!
- Reviewed in the United States on June 24, 2006Half Blonde, Half Cuban works on several different levels in an extraordinary way for a first novel from an obviously very talented writer.
Like Cuba, the character of Alysia is a constant enigma, that you are trying to figure out until the last page.
If you are thinking of visiting Cuba, or are just interested in the mystery of that Island nation, this book is must reading. One of the key things of a visit to Cuba is a foreigner's inability to read all the signs, no matter how world-wise the traveller is or how well you speak Spanish. You'll have a better time and understand that complex people, that despite incredible hardships manage to be full of vitality.
I found the sensitive exploration of the plight of Cuban women that are forced to become "Jineteras" to feed themselves and their families the only one I have ever read that gets to the truth. Despite the harsh realities, they remain dignified and in control of themselves rather than succumbing to the humiliation of the sex tourism that has been foisted on the Island's population.
Much better still is that an American girl that had it all ends up having to sell herself, in that special Cuban way, to stop the starvation that is a real problem for anyone living there. No Cuban writer - and I have read plenty - conveys things in such a meaningful way to the reader because Alysia sees it from our point of view - Westerners with enough to eat and freedom - as if we too joined the Cuban people's plight.
But the book is much, much more than some of the hot sex scenes and some not-so-hot scenes that you make you squirm for the plight of that people. Wixon takes you around Havana and its characters as she searches for her father, an odyssey that rivals anything I have read on that special relationship, (the special nature of the father-daughter union) in a fun way, just as if she were a Cuban showing you around.
Orisha's, undercover Government agents,Turistas of all shapes, sizes and inclinations, and the woman of that Island are all portrayed in real tones, so real you get attached to the entire family of characters.
From El Floridita ( one the many Hemingway haunts in Havana) to the road to Moron you are constantly visiting that Island and seeing the diversity and beauty that is Cuba, that decades of oppression have failed to dimish.
There is something in here also about searching for more than your father but your country, your sense of place, and in conveying this the book really makes it.
I eagerly await Ms. Wixon's next book and strongly recommend this one.
- Reviewed in the United States on May 6, 2005Lisa Wixon's debut book is so beautifully written, it manages to charm the pants off you and engage your full empathy and compassion at the same time. An intial introduction of the material made me leap to the conclusion that this book would be painful to read: The story of the of a young Cuban- American searching for her father in a communist country, stripped of her financial resources and her dignity, forced to prostitue her body to finance her quest. However, Ms. Wixon flawless delivery of her heroines experience balances her desperation with hilarious situations, such as Alysia's lack of grace as she learns to salsa, struggling to be veiwed as sexy in a society that wears thier sexuality as effortlessly as a comfortable shirt.
I literally could not put this book down. The writing was so crisp and vivid, the descriptions detailed and intricate, but so freshly laid out that you had to rumenate over many of the sentences to allow the full tangy flavor of them to sink in.
What I appreciated most about this full bodied immersion into the Cubano realm was how amazingly unique a people they are. The Latin intellect that allows them to hold opposing beliefs and make peace with that conflict. Thier dignity and humor, not downtrodden and defeated, but thier inane ability to see down the road, bide their time, and appreciate how temporary their current nighmarish situation is. Quick to find fun, eager in thier joy and most of all their dignity and pride. I was overwhelmed by respect and admiration for this pride, peppered with humor, layered with a love for family and friends. An utterly delicious banquet of prose, I am eagerly anticipating Ms. Wixon's next course. Bravo!