Tastes like Cuba

Tastes Like Cuba is the account of an exile searching for the identity he's lost and becoming someone else in the process. Eduardo Machado has grappled with questions of identity, loss, and resistance throughout his life and work. He has found that the most natural means of connecting with today's Cuban experience is through food." "The stories of Machado's life from child of privilege in pre-revolutionary Cuba; to exile in Los Angeles; to actor, director, playwright, and professor in New York are interleaved with recipes for the meals that have enriched him. What emerges is a larger picture of what it means to be Latino in America today."--Jacket. In this memoir, playwright and professor Machado (Kissing Fidel) tells the story of his family's escape from Cuba and their assimilation into the U.S. Although his tale features a familiar triumph-over-adversity storyline, it distinguishes itself in descriptions of Cuban delicacies, complete with recipes. Recalling a hasty dinner of swordfish escabeche enjoyed in the midst of the Revolution, he writes, "Something about looking down at a golden slab, cutting into the thick flesh ... made the meal feel like a luxury." To better share the tastes of home, the author studs the book with recipes for favorites like Roast Pork, heady with garlic and citrus, and Biztec Empanizado, a tropical country-fried steak that's surprisingly light. Though the vivid food writing captivates, the memoir can drag in long reporterly passages, and rankles with a few too many glib assessments: "The shock of dad's departure was that it changed how we understood the very concept of family." Nevertheless, the luxuriant descriptions of family meals, and the obvious joy Machado takes in recounting them, make this memoir a tasty read. Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.