The Big Apple Circus at Whitespace

Looking back over the past few months of posts on this blog, there seem to be a terrible number of photographs of yours truly orating before crowds of varying sizes, in dimly lit spaces. I really need to give some thought to how to make the Walking to Guantánamo blog a more scintillating reading experience, but in the meantime, just as I was getting ready to hit you with another dose of the same after two recent book readings at the Whitespace Gallery in Atlanta, I discovered they've done it for me, on their own blog!

The Sound Café, Bywater district, New Orleans

New Orleans is really the United States' only truly Caribbean city, and I felt going there with Walking to Guantánamo was a must. My good friend Martin Krusche, originally of Munich and Red Hook, Brooklyn, permanently resettled there shortly before hurricane Katrina, and then stuck it out despite having to evacuate just after his arrival. When I called him, he suggested a reading at Beth's books, in the Bywater.

Shortly after I met Martin, at the beginning of this millenium, he went to Cuba himself, taking his own bicycle and riding it the length of the country. In fact, I lent him the saddlebags I had originally had made in Trinidad, so those made a return journey. Martin was smart enough to take advantage of the prevailing winds, riding from Santiago to Havana, rather than the other way around, and said my advice, to take kevlar inner tubes for the bike, prevented him from having even a single flat tire. (I had dozens, recounted in the book in excruciating and, I hope, hilarious detail).

Hart McNee, doing his thing on the bass flute

One man doing the work of three: Michael Skinkus playing an entire set of batá on his own

To my surprise and joy Martin had put together a gang of musicians to introduce me and the book reading, and even cooked up a massive pot of Cuban black beans. The band launched the evening with a collection of orisha songs, invocations to the saints played on the trio of ceremonial drums called batá. Then I read from a chapter in which I had an encounter with the vodou lwa Gran Bwa.

Martin's friend Christine P. Horn was kind enough to host us in her home sight unseen, and when dropping off our bags there earlier in the afternoon I had seen a painting of Gran Bwa on the kitchen cabinet. It turned out that the painter and musician Hart McNee had painted it, and named one of his albums after that same spirit, a coincidence which seemed too great to ignore when choosing which chapter to read from.

Don't let Mr. Krusche's Bavarian regalia fool you; these were authentic Cuban black beans

The visit to New Orleans was full of coincidences; Tristan Thompson, who runs Beth's books and had done a fabulous job of promoting the event, turned out to have spent a winter at McMurdo station, Antarctica, about a decade ago...

Princeton Public Library, January 13th

The biggest crowd yet, perhaps not surprising given that this is my home territory, where I went to high school and college. Lots of familiar faces and family friends, thanks to my mother's indefatigable promotional skills! That's Mr. David Schrayer, front left.

That's me, the tiny speck in the distant far left center.


I read from a chapter in which I described eating a sandwich apparently filled with dirt before exploring the interconnectedness of the afro-Cuban mythology relating to the enormous ceiba trees, and the rare endemic Giant kingbird, a flycatcher that breeds only in them. Then I took questions and read a short and, if I say so myself, hilarious bit about contraband cheese sales beside the central highway.

Upcoming Events

January 13th Reading at Princeton Public Library on Witherspoon St. in Princeton 7:30PM

January 16th A solo exhibition of my photographic work from the walk across Cuba opens at Whitespace Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia. I'll be at the opening from 7-10PM.

January 18th at 4PM Reading at Whitespace Gallery, ATL

January 22nd at 5:30PM Reading at Beth's Books at 2700 Chartres St. in the Bywater district, New Orleans, LA

Hope to see you one place or the other!

Guantánamo to go into its second printing!

We had a lovely book bash last week at Idlewild Books on West 19th Street in Manhattan. It's a travel-oriented bookstore with a new and brilliant, but, once you have experienced it, obvious twist. Travel guides, travel literature, and carefully selected regular literature are grouped together by region and country, so that Walking to Guantánamo shares a shelf with, for instance, a biography of Che. I signed something like 40 books, and was very proud to announce that Guantánamo is already going into its second printing. If you want a first edition, act fast!

Pedro Giraudo, Aaron Halva and Jainardo Batista from Nu' Guajiro rocking the set in the bay window at Idlewild Books. Lots of delicious reading on the shelves behind.

The place filled up quickly, and I failed to take any more photographs once the mad signing of books had begun...

The next day, suffering from a mild hangover, thanks to one too many of St. John Frizell's stellar mojitos, I high-tailed it north to Cambridge on the trusty Fung-Wah bus. Laura scooped me up in her pickup truck and we headed for Maine, where I read on Saturday at Gulf of Maine books in Brunswick, land of the flowing gray beard. Brunswick is sister city to Trinidad, Cuba, and I read about that city to a standing room only crowd, mostly drawn from the large local retiree community. I felt a bit silly reading my descriptions of the aged, septuagenarian bicycle agent who had helped me continue my journey by Flying Pigeon once I realized that the average age of the crowd was certainly above sixty, and possibly right up there in the seventies with Rigoberto, the character in question, but nobody seemed put out. Gulf of Maine is another great independent bookstore you should check out if you are in the area.

Ms. Harmon browses the design section at Gulf of Maine books

Poet and proprietor Gary Lawless and his beard

Frantic signing

Until I got to Maine I had been suffering under the sad self-delusion that I have actually grown a beard worth talking about. There were at least three resplendent heavy growths in the house that put my tatty reddish frizzle to shame. I promised to try harder for my next visit.

All Maine photographs courtesy L. Harmon, except the one she is in

Miami is full of nice people, even if you are writing about Cuba!

265 Aragon Avenue in Coral Gables: a warm and inviting place to buy books

I particularly liked the promotional pumpkin carving on the outdoor patio bar

Photos: Antonina Vargas

The Books and Books flagship store in Coral Gables is one of the most beautiful bookshops I've ever seen. It is a vast, U-shaped space of high-ceilinged galleries, with warm lighting spilling down on to tables overflowing with fine reading. Every wall is lined with comforting, enveloping shelves. In the interior courtyard of the "U" is a wine-bar where cappuccinos are served beneath rustling palms.

I was nervous in the hours leading up the reading, as Miami takes up a lot of space in the world of Cuban-America. My book is not political per se, but there are many people, I think, for whom my decision to travel in Cuba, as US citizen, cannot help but be seen as a political act in and of itself. Miami, in my imagination, is a place that still holds many Cuban-Americans hostile to the very simplest premise of my book: an American visits Cuba. But although there was an excellent turnout, none of these hostiles apparently go to book readings. I asked how many Cuban-Americans were in the audience and saw at least 8 hands go up in the crowd.

I read a rather poignant scene about a going-away party in the city of Trinidad, for a man named Conrad, who was leaving Cuba, perhaps forever, to emigrate to Miami. When I finished, some of the most interesting questions came from these "Miami Cubans." They were sincere in their curiosity about the island, and nobody seemed to hold my trip against me.


One man in the audience, a lawyer, gave me the excellent news that the statute of limitations on the Trading with the Enemy Act is six years, so that although I violated the law by visiting Cuba, my government's window of opportunity for prosecuting me has closed. I left my email address with Conrad's father-in-law in Trinidad, after the drunken going-away party in May or June of 2000, but I never heard from him after my return to the United States, and one man in the audience thought he could help me try to find him. Stay tuned for the ongoing story of Finding Conrad.

Author photos: Camila de Onis

Reading in Miami this Thursday October 30th

I will be taking Cuba to the Cuban-Americans this Thursday, for my first Florida book reading, at Books and Books in Coral Gables. The bookstore is at 265 Aragon Avenue, and the reading is at 8PM.

I'm hoping for a nice crowd, particularly since in Sunday's paper the Miami Herald calls Walking to Guantánamo "a fascinating, wry, vividly detailed and elegantly written account of a trip that no one else is likely to take."

Twenty years ago it would have been a terrifying prospect to try and promote this book in South Florida, even though I think it is an extremely balanced view of life on the island. In the old days down in Miami one would have been virtually crucified just for having visited the island. My sense is that things have changed and that the Cubans of Miami are now almost as diverse a group as the Cubans of Cuba. I could be wrong, though. I'll let you all know soon enough if I get rotten eggs thrown at me. It is, after all, the day before Halloween, better known in suburbia as "mischief night."

If you don't have a copy of the book yet, and can't join me in Miami, you really ought to get yourself one from my publisher, HERE, or order it from Amazon, HERE.

At the local...

Yesterday's reading at Sunny's Bar in Red Hook, Brooklyn, was a triumphant success. There wasn't an empty seat in the house, despite the glorious Sunday afternoon fall weather. Three of us read as part of the Sundays at Sunny's reading series, which has now been going on for six years. It was a wonderful, receptive crowd, with many friends from the neighborhood in attendance, but also a whole host of folks from farther afield.

Here David Rothenberg reads a wonderfully entertaining passage from Thousand Mile Song, in which he describes playing clarinet duets with whales. He then played a recording of this amazing interspecies musical experience. It was a rare treat. (His book comes with a CD). That's David, farthest to the left of the three people behind the bar.

I read three passages from Guantánamo. The first was my description of the rodeo-like décima poetry competitions held in Las Tunas, in which improvisational poetic artistry mingles with ten-gallon fashions and macho braggadocio; the second an account of contraband cheese-selling strategy beside the highway ("Like a matador with a cape, my friend pivoted with the cheese to give it maximum exposure as the car passed, but the vehicle did not slow."); and the third a story about discovering that a portion of popcorn I purchased in Trinidad was wrapped up in pages torn from a Cuban edition of the Communist Manifesto.

Book Court books takes care of selling books at the event, and I'm proud to report that they were left wishing they had brought along more copies of Walking to Guantánamo, because they quickly sold out.

A charming neighborhood bookstore in Philadelphia!

I had my first official reading yesterday afternoon in Mt. Airy, Philadelphia, a beautiful neighborhood and an apparent liberal enclave, where the residents seem to be battling it out over whose overgrown english-style garden is the most splendid, and who has the most Obama for president lawn banners. Although it was a beautiful day outside, the offer of a chapter from Guantánamo still managed to fill the cozy second-floor reading room of the very friendly Big Blue Marble Bookstore, assuaging my fears that for my reading debut I might end up starring in my own remake of the album-signing scene from This is Spinal Tap. Thanks for having me!