LatinaStyle

April, 2005

Confessions of a Cuban Nerd

Comelibros (book-eater) and ratón de biblioteca (library mouse) are popular Spanish terms for nerd. Both were loudly and regularly applied to me when I was a teenager in Havana. My classmates didn’t realize that I had no choice but to be a comelibros. I lacked a prominent behind –the foremost mark of female beauty in Cuba–, I was too skinny, didn’t know how to dance, and never wore make-up. My Saturday night options used to be staying home reading or hanging around with goofy girlfriends.

Havana wasn’t a city throbbing with life in the mid 80’s. The only two television channels broadcast just a few hours a day and programs were repeated ad nauseam. A film would be shown for weeks at the same movie theater. Waiting lines in restaurants and cafeterias lasted a couple of hours on weekends. No wonder I became a book glutton.

Reading transported me to a different, magical universe where a dull day was over in a short paragraph and a lively dinner party went on for two pages. Unfortunately, one night I found out I had read all the volumes of our home library, including my grandfather’s leather-bound collection of nineteenth-century Spanish novels and my mother’s dust-covered medical texts. I could repeat by heart entire paragraphs from my favorite books. It was too late to go to the bookstore in hope of finding something palatable. "Why don’t you write a story yourself?" my father suggested. The proverbial light bulb went off in my head.

I sat in front of our venerable Underwood typewriter and started a short story. Papá smiled and said "Aha!" That was my first serious try at writing. I haven’t stopped since. Neither my mom nor my grandma were enthusiastic, much less supportive, of my newly found calling. "Writing is a vice," abuela stated. "It is for marimachas." "You’ll end up a spinster unless you go out and meet guys!" my mom barked.

Like Jo March in Little Women I had made peace with the idea of spinsterhood when I met Hugh Page, an American psychologist, in 1994. We married a year later. My mother and grandma sighed in relief. In 1996 I moved to California. Then I sighed in relief.

Once in La Yuma, as we Cubans called the United States, my writing addiction escalated. Thankfully my husband, also a writer, has always supported my vice –in two languages, to boot. My novels A Girl like Che Guevara (Soho Press), in English, and Posesas de La Habana, in Spanish (PurePlay Press) were published in 2004. My mom and grandma were, oddly enough, thrilled. If my father were alive, I know he’d have smiled knowingly and said "Aha!"

Though my novels aren’t really autobiographical, nerdy Lourdes, the main character of A Girl…shares some traits with myself. I participated in Santería ceremonies similar to those described in the book. I spent two months at a school-in-the-field camp in Pinar del Rio picking tobacco leaves. Posesas de La Habana (Haunted Ladies of Havana) takes place during the Special Period, in 2002, and its characters also bear a suspicious resemblance to my own relatives. With this novel I intended to give voice to four generations of Cuban women, from a ninety-year-old great-grandmother to an eleven-year-old girl. When my mom read the book, her first comment was, "Chica, I never say so many dirty words!"

Now, at thirty-eight, I am less of a nerd. I have gained some weight, much to my chagrin, as in La Yuma culitos aren’t cool. I do wear make-up and my weekend options have expanded considerably. Yet I still prefer to spend Saturday nights at home, typing away. Once a nerd, I figure, always a nerd.