SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Midlife Women Entrepreneurs. I'm your host, Lynette Turner, and today we are going to be talking about family stories with my guest, Anna Hebra Flaster. She's the author of Property of the Revolution, a memoir that begins with her family being forced out of Cuba and follows what that loss meant across generations. Anna, welcome to the podcast. You've got a great story. I can't wait for it to unfold here today on the podcast. So give yourself a bit of an introduction and then we'll take it from there.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Thank you, Lynette. It's uh it's great to be here, and I'm glad that I'm starting you off on an another cycle of authors because we need people like you to help us get our stories out. Uh that it's a it's a crowded ecosystem right now with so many books out and so many stories and world news doing what it's doing. So thanks for having me. My story is that this extraordinary thing happened to our family when I was six years old. We lost our home, our family, part of our family, our country, our culture overnight, or almost overnight within 48 hours because we opposed the Cuban Revolution and we finally got our exit papers and were able to flee. And that as a six-year-old, it changed my life forever, but it was a very abrupt uprooting. And that has had a very major impact on not just me, but on my whole family over the decades. And I wanted to capture the heroism of the viejos, what I call the viejos in our family, the elders who saw that what was happening politically was never going to restore the democracy that the revolution had promised to restore, and that we, our way of life, had ended, and that they had to do the unthinkable, which was to break away from four generations of our family and leave. And then with nothing, we had a suitcase with one change of clothes for each person. Nothing of value could be taken. In fact, the title of the book is Property of the Revolution, because one of the memories I have of that night is when the guard kicked us out of our home. He sealed the door shut with a banner. And he I remember hearing the against the door. He was sealing it shut. And years later, I learned that it read property of the revolution, because everything in the house was now the revolutions. And you know, children don't have the vocabulary necessarily to say what an injustice is, but they feel it. And I think I carried that with me for a long time. And as a writer, I would dabble into this my story. I talked, I wrote a I've written a lot about Cuba and and other topics, but that kept coming up. And I needed to tell the story. I needed to celebrate the heroism of people who do these things, who dive into the unknown, who give everything up maybe for the next generation, and what you can learn from them. And I learned so much from my views, my elders. I grew up in a home with it was a duplex, and we grew up in a very Cuban-American style, with even though we were in New Hampshire, of all places, that's where we landed. That's another big part of the story is talk about a fish out of water. Um, and those five adults, my mother, my father, my grandmother, my maternal grandmother who lived with us, my aunt, my mother's sister, and her husband and their children and the kids in my family, we all grew up as one family. And being loved hard and beautifully by five adults every day of your life is an absolute gift. And seeing your siblings and your cousins who are who are like siblings, receiving that love. And it's not always pretty. I mean, that's a lot of advice and a lot of control, right? Parental influence. But we always knew that at the bot at the bottom we were deeply, deeply loved. And we had nothing, but we had everything because we had that. And I wanted readers to feel that. And I it's been great hearing from readers when they say, I didn't want to leave your house. I didn't want to leave the viejos. And that tells me they felt what I always felt and what I I guess it's the gift that I wanted to give a reader. Feel that. Know that that's possible. Know that anything is possible.

SPEAKER_01 4:11

Yeah. So let's let's go back a little bit. Take us, I mean, you did talk a little bit about the scene that you remember when you were finally able to leave, but it was an abrupt way of leaving, you know, it was good in a way, but also it was, like you said, sort of felt unjust. What was the scene leading up to all of that? What was the story behind all of that?

SPEAKER_00 4:34

So in the 50s, we Cuba had uh been taken over by a dictatorship, Rugencio Batista, and the democracy that had existed basically ended. Uh there was economic growth and opportunity, but there was corruption and people wanted their democracy back. So these rebels were in different parts of Cuba trying to oust the dictatorship. My mother actually risked her life collecting money and medicine for the rebels at that time, risking arrest, and she was almost arrested. That scene is in the book. Then the rebels come in, everything goes sideways. All of a sudden, you have spying groups on each block. Everything is about politics, everything is about proving your loyalty to the revolution and to Fidel. Uh you you have to participate in different organizations, you have to march certain days, you have to volunteer at work for midnight shifts. Everything was forced, everything was different. Neighbors began denouncing neighbors as counter-revolutionaries. That could ruin your life. And there was this, and my mother described that time as living as if she was being asphyxiated. She couldn't breathe. They decided finally that they were going to do the unthinkable, which was leave. But Cubans had lost the right to leave their country, which they had always had. And now they needed to get an exit visa. When you applied for an exit visa, you became a gusano, a worm. That's what Castro called people who wanted to leave. And then as a worm, you had to renounce your job. Everyone knew you were a worm, a gusano. The police wouldn't help you if anything went wrong, and you were a target. And they and you didn't know if or when you would get that exit visa. So my parents wait waited for three years without work, without jobs, being targeted and thinking they might never get out. When all of a sudden, three years later, I'm walking home from my my grandmother's house, and there's a mob in front of the house. There's a motorcycle. No one in the barrio had a motorcycle. I go inside, there's a guard there with a gun. He's interviewing my parents, writing things down. My mother's running around, packing a suitcase, my grandmother's holding my baby brother crying. Then he takes us out and he seals the door. And basically we had 48 hours to say goodbye to everybody, and then we would we would be leaving for the United States. Two days later, we had you couldn't take anything of value, as I I think I said that right. You couldn't, you could take one change of clothes for each person. So you had one suitcase, one change of clothes for each person, nothing of value, no diploma, no jewelry, no money. Also, the head of the committee for the revolution would for the defense of the revolution came that that when the guard arrived to take an inventory of everything in the house. Because the day that you applied for the exit visa, you had to, you had to show the committee for the defense of the revolution on your block, every block had one, what you had in your home. They did an inventory. Because when your exit papers arrived and you left, everything had to be there. You couldn't sell or give away anything in your home from that day forward. So that was one of the other things I remember seeing Juana was her name walking around with a clipboard. And so um within 48 hours, we had said goodbye to great grandparents, grandaunts, and uncles, people who lived all over. This is something Americans don't get. In in other these other cultures, you don't really leave. You stay in your area. So I had four generations of both sides of my family on the blocks around me. Everybody knew everybody. And we never saw those people again. One or two we may have seen. And my great-grandfather in particular was 90, I think. And uh it was very difficult for my grandmother to leave him, but her brother said he would take care of him and that she needed to be with her daughters. So my grandmother lost the most of all of us because she never saw her brother or her father again and wasn't able to care for them when they were dying. They were both ill and they were dying. So we carried all of that with us. We were three days in a refugee center in Miami. Uh, and then we were in New York City for a very brief couple of weeks. I started school there. And then another week later, we were in New Hampshire, in Nashville, New Hampshire, and with a snowstorm, a blizzard that duped dumped 18 and a 18 inches on us. And my grandmother was sure we would all die of pneumonia because the climate is a threat when you're used to the the Caribbean. So that was 1967, November. We get here, and this country is in the middle of a lot of turmoil, right? There are race riots and anti-war protests against the Vietnamese War and hippies, and my parents didn't know what to make of any of that. And so they they they loved the New Hampshire state motto, live free or die. They barely spoke English, but they knew what that meant. They loved that. They loved that it was near the Canadian border. They figured if there was a revolution in this country, they'd be able to get out through there. And they uh had a saying, which was keep the Studa Baker's tank half full. Because once you've lost everything like that, you're never the same. And you're always you've always got one, you're poised to jump if you have to. And that affects you. You know, that that this is I call it refugeedum, which is different than immigrant hood. Refugeedum, we don't get to go back generally. We don't get to see those people again. We barely have anything that we can take with us. I think we talked about this when we first talked, that yeah, I used to be jealous of my American friends when they would point out, oh, this is an heirloom from my grandaunt Susie, or this painting my thought my grandfather passed down to us. And it was one of those moments that happens throughout your life as as someone who's not born here, where you're reminded, oh yeah, I'm never gonna have an heirloom. That's that's not what I'm gonna get. I'm gonna get something else. What what am I gonna get? And over my my adult life, I realized that I was getting an experience that is maybe the most human experience of all, which is losing your home and rebuilding it and what it takes to do that and to land on your feet. And the stories of of simple courage, outstand uh uh extraordinary courage that I get, those are mine. I lived those. My my parents showed me those. And maybe that's a better heirloom than uh than the the China set.

SPEAKER_01 11:01

Yeah, exactly. And when we did talk about that on the pre-call, and I I didn't even think of it that way, you know. I don't you you don't if you're not in it, it's hard to to relate to it, I guess, or to feel that depth. And I feel like that was a big depth for you to realize that your heirlooms were your stories. I guess that was a big aha for you.

SPEAKER_00 11:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

What what story did your family tell about surviving and starting over? And I mean, this is probably uh obvious, but were there any regrets leaving family behind? I'm sure there's overwhelming guilt, but would they s still do it over again?

SPEAKER_00 11:41

Um I think there were regrets because it's impossible to have that kind of thing happen and not look back and wonder about tweaks in the in the plan that you could have made. I think I think for my great for my grandmother, that regret was not being able to fulfill her duty. In our culture, caring for your elders is a responsibility, an honor, and an expectation that you have in yourself. There there were no nursing homes in Cuba. There still aren't any nursing homes in Cuba. And she wasn't able to do that. So it was a something left unfulfilled. So as far as a regret, I I know that in the end, she was really glad that she came with us and that she she was surrounded by great grandchildren and grandchildren and children who loved her. But that probably stayed with her. For my parents, it was probably more a culture that you cannot get back. And even what you left behind is gone. It's not the same culture now as it was in their youth when things were so good. We were working class Cubans. We never had anything really of material value, but we had this extraordinary community. I'm here in Miami today, and I was just with my my aunt and uncle who are in their 80s, and we spent the afternoon laughing about the nicknames of people in the neighborhood and how people just called each other these nicknames that in the United States. I actually wrote an NPR piece about this a long time ago. That's that's what started the conversation. But it's that familiarity that you have, your family almost. Because you are your great-grandfathers were friends, and you're all there. Everyone's there. So that kind of community having let let that go. Uh, and and the values of that culture, the value of caring for your elders, the value of caring for your community, of helping your community, that was hard for them to find here. And remember, it's 1967. There was no Hispanics anywhere, let alone Cubans. You might find a Puerto Rican every now and then, you might find a Dominican, maybe a Mexican. But and when I was little, I thought that Spanish was something that only we spoke in our home. I didn't realize that that was something a whole bunch of other people spoke because we were the only place where I heard Spanish. It wasn't on TV, it wasn't on the radio. So whenever I saw someone who was when I for the first time I saw a a family that was speaking Spanish, we had gone to a lake and I thought, I I didn't know those cousins lived near here. I could have been playing with those kids. And I said to my mother, why didn't you tell me about these primos, these cousins? And she said, they're not, they're from Ecuador. But that's how I began to realize, my God, it's it's something I'm part of something bigger. Because I thought that was it.

SPEAKER_01 14:24

Yeah, that that's really cool. That's really cool. Yeah, too.

SPEAKER_00 14:28

You asked about stories, and to me, so my mother's battle cry was ponte guapa. It's the first chapter of my book. Ponte guapa, P-O-N-T-E, guapa. Guapa in some Spanish countries means beautiful. In Cuba, it means brave and beautiful, which it because it is. Brave is beautiful. And so she would say when something was going awry, ponte guapa, make yourself brave. And that helped me all my life. I would hear it when I needed it. I tell my daughter that. I tell my son that. In his case, I say ponte guapo. Uh, and I saw her live it. And I saw all of the adults in my family live that they would make themselves brave. And part of how they made themselves brave was by keeping the family together throughout everything and nurturing each other. And it was I don't mean to make it sound like, oh, it was this beautiful kumbaya scene all the time. We fought like cats and dogs. You can imagine three women, mothers, a mother and two two daughters, and five children, and raising everybody in the same house. There were arguments left and right, but it you always knew where you stood with everybody because nobody held back. And you knew that they had your back. So, but by being brave, ponte guapa, keep your family, find your people, and keep the good people, the people who are. I know I realize that not every family is nurturing. I had the great luck of being part of one. And staying together helped them decipher this new world, the culture, uh, a culture that was so bizarre, a climate that was so bizarre. And I also think the story that they told, which wasn't a true story completely, saved us. They believed and they would say, We beat Castro, we beat the the revolution, we beat communism, look at us go. We're amazing. We're amazing. And we had nothing, but that was what we heard, so we thought we had everything. And it made us feel invincible when we literally had eggs and rice to eat for I don't know how long. That's all we had. It it uh was a story that got us through some of the roughest moments, some when we faced racism, when we faced discrimination. And um only when my daughter turned the age I was when I left Cuba did I realize that there was more to that story. And uh, I had become very depressed and I couldn't figure out what it was. I brought her, she was about to go into kindergarten, I brought her for an evaluation, and the psychiatrist said she was fine, but she wanted to talk more with me about what my concerns were. I thought she was just trying to make more money because I had gotten my answer. But she brought my husband and me in for a conversation and said, What is it? What is it that you're so worried about? And I started to say, um, you know, the world can be so hard at that age and life and people. And I broke down in I don't know that I've ever cried like that. And I'm not a crier generally. I don't cry very easily. And she said, I think this has something to do with the fact that your daughter is the age that you were when you went through your trauma. And I said, What trauma? What are you talking about? And she said, Well, what you described your family history. You said that, you know, you'd lost, you'd been kicked out of your house, you'd lost your home, your family, your country, your language, and within f within a couple of days and you were in New Hampshire and you didn't know anybody and the language and the culture. Well, that's trauma. I said, That's not trauma. Because if that was trauma, then the other story was wrong. And it took I rejected it. I was thinking, Americans and their freaking traumas, you know, like what why do we why is everything a trauma with these people? And then I started to get to have all these memories come back that I had buried. I couldn't believe some of the things that came came rushing back, partly because I began writing more about it. And then I realized that it had taken a lot out and that we had won, but we had lost a lot. And at first I thought, and they were most of them were still alive then, so I could go back and they were more than happy to answer questions and and think about how that story might not have been accurate, but they wouldn't they they wouldn't have changed it. That that's what we needed to hear. And I know your your listeners look for inspiration and and ideas for how to confront these major problems as business people, as just women, mothers. And it's a very interesting dilemma when we have to tell ourselves a story that might not be totally true, but that we need to cling to to get to the other side of that. It's the most hopeful version. And then once we're safe, we can look back and and unpack whatever needs to be unpacked. That's what I did. That's partly why the book exists. And I feel like my life is, well, it's obviously more complicated when you see the full picture, but it's also richer and you feel like you know more about being a human being.

SPEAKER_01 19:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:29

And and there's a strength in in that challenge of looking at the hard stuff that comes after you've looked at it.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

When you think about what's going on with Cuba now, what are your feelings?

SPEAKER_00 19:41

I worry, Helenette, that a lot of non-Cubans, anybody in Latin America will know that the hardships that the Cubans are going through right now predate this oil blockade by many years, decades even. And Cubans want their freedom. They want to say in their future. They've had the same dictatorship for 67 years. And I worry that the reports, the articles that I see often don't give that context. And they make it look like everything that all these horrible things are because of this new policy from the U.S. when everybody knows that's been that way for many, many, many years. And it's a dictatorship. Some people have a hard time calling it that. There are friends of the revolution uh around the world who still believe that it this was this great thing. And it it it wasn't. It didn't never did what it promised, the free and fair elections. And it kept everyone in poverty. Cuba was a one of the strongest economies in the hemisphere, you know, and and ranked in top categories of economic development in the 50s. There was corruption, there were other problems, but Cubans have been living in it in dire poverty for many years. And they're not permitted to have businesses, to even move around freely in their own country. It it is a totalitarian dictatorship. And so what I hope will happen is that somehow they'll all leave, although I don't think people like that will leave easily. But that's what this this past weekend there were protests all over Cuba. Cubans are burning trash that the government hasn't picked up in years. Mounds and mounds of trash. They're burning them at night when there are power outages and they're protected in the darkness. Because if they catch, if the police catch you protesting, you go to jail and you get six years, seven years, eight years for protesting for asking for light. So let's hope. I can only hope and pray that this is finally it.

unknown 21:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:37

But that regime is very, very good at holding on to power and they've learned a lot. They've outlasted all of our presidents, you know.

SPEAKER_01 21:45

Yeah. So when I think about you and you telling your story, and you know, you were clearly there was a little bit of, you know, still feelings there, emotions, whatever, when you were just even telling your story now. When I think about other women and they've got A story inside of them, but maybe they're a little bit too afraid to put it into words or to get it written down. What would you say to them to encourage them that the pen can be a path to healing, I guess?

SPEAKER_00 22:14

It really can, but I also acknowledge that fear. I face that fear every single day when I would go to write. It's a real fear that you the way I did it was, well, I had my son. My son was pushing me. He he would text me, Did you write today? Did you write today? And I'd say, Well, it's something, nope, that's not an answer. I don't, that's not a good excuse. I'm going to check tomorrow. It's good to have somebody if you're working on a book length thing. But if you're writing for yourself, I would do it, you know, people say, oh, first thing in the morning. Well, maybe that doesn't work for you. Maybe you're a late-night person. But the idea is to write even a page of what it is that you're feeling or what it is that you want to explore. And that, I think, ending, because I would always do this when I was writing the book. I would end in a either in the middle of a scene or at a point where I really wanted to see what would happen next or finish. And guess what? That makes you much more likely to go back to it the next day. Leave something juicy for yourself to go back to. I also found that rewarding myself when I would finish a chapter or when I would write for the number of hours that I wanted to write for, I would, I would always have a prize. And for me, the prize is digging in my garden and weeding or planting this thing, this beautiful plant that I just bought at the you know, at the grocery store, and I want to put it in the ground or pruning, doing things with my hands. When I'm nervous, I find doing things with my hands really helps. Even folding, ironing. But it was a great way, doing something physical was a great way to unhook from the this mental challenge of putting down in words these abstract feelings, these in these immense moments and emotions.

SPEAKER_01 24:02

Yeah. No, that that's really good. And I to I just think about too, like if, you know, if you're thinking about, you know, the stories inside of you and writing them, that's good. And to get them out doesn't even need to become an actual published book, right? And I feel like there's a lot of healing in that process. What do you recommend somebody would do if they wanted to have similar memoir style book, but they know they need to go and ask family some questions, but they're a little bit afraid to, you know, well, if I ask so and so, I know that my mom's not going to say anything, or my dad or my cousins, or whatever. How how would you encourage them to still write the book and still try to get those stories?

SPEAKER_00 24:46

You know, I I don't know that you could ever force anybody to I I happen to come from a very not everybody was a storyteller, but as I said earlier, you know, I you knew where you stood with everybody in that family because they would just tell you. So my I rarely had that problem. Although some people would be much more some people are just more natural storytellers. And they'd they'd if you wrote down, for example, the words that came out of my father's mouth, you'd have a short story. That's that's how good of a storyteller was. You just would have to I actually did that once and I it got published. And somebody asked me if I had interviewed the person. And I said, I didn't really interview. I asked a question and that's what came out. And other people were more black and white and gave you just the facts. Here's something that and I don't know that that people would really allow you to record them, but I would love that. I found sometimes that recording people would stop them, but other times they they would usually they we've they forget that they're being recorded and and then they want to listen to it, what what you recorded, and they love it. And then it's easier to get them back because they see that it's safe, they see that it's a beautiful thing. So maybe showing them, but let's just play this game. I want you to tell me the story of the craziest person in your youth, whatever. And then you play it back for them and you see that they see that it's it's harmless. The other way to do it is if you know the person and you know the general story that you're after, you can say what you imagine happened. So you've heard a story and you can write about it as as if you know what happened and say, I wasn't, you know, this didn't happen to me, but I know how I would react and I know how my other people in my family would react. And I imagine that she said this and he did that, and you can create something, and maybe you can create it the way you want it to be.

SPEAKER_01 26:39

Yeah, I know exactly.

SPEAKER_00 26:41

So what's next for you, Anna? Well, immediately I have a really exciting event in two nights at the University of Miami with another Cuban-American author, Elena Shepard, who also has a uh a memoir out, and the Cuban Heritage Collection at the Library of the University of Miami invited us to talk. And we're being interviewed by Mead Faljito, and it's gonna be that there's a reception, it's gonna be a great evening. I've got a lot going on, a lot of speaking engagements. The book has won a number of prizes, and I'm very excited about going to um the American Library Association's conference in June. Have another book in the works, untitled, and uh about the artist-driven protests that happened in Cuba in 2021. And it'll be historical uh fiction because I really want to incorporate those facts, but have fictitious characters so that Americans can really see. It's a story that was never covered here and and was major there. And I'm friends with some of the activists in that story.

SPEAKER_01 27:50

Yeah, so that's amazing. That's amazing. So tell us again where is the best place to get the book then? It's on audible as well, right?

SPEAKER_00 28:00

It's on audible, it's on spot. I I actually recorded it's I narrated the book, and that was one of the best things that's come because when you're when you're recording, you're in this little studio and it's dark. And as I was telling the stories and speaking in the Viejos language, it was like they were all there in the room in the little booth, and I didn't want to leave the booth. It was really wonderful. That's great. Yeah, that's so good. Yeah. Any any library, you can download it from any library site and um any any bookstore, it's distributed by Simon and Schuster. So if your bookstore doesn't have it, you can ask for it. And I strongly encourage people to go to their local bookstores and uh ask for it.

SPEAKER_01 28:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:41

Then if it means it's going to take a little bit longer than getting it on Amazon or Barnes and Noble or so, basically any book, online book retailer will have it. Any library can get it. And as for the audiobook, and it it's in three formats: print, e book, and audiobook. And the audiobook is available on all the platforms Spotify, um, um, Hoopla, Overdrive, which are the library ones, and all the all the major ones.

SPEAKER_01 29:08

Yeah. No, that's good. That's good. And where would could they find you from a social media standpoint?

SPEAKER_00 29:14

I'm on Facebook. I don't have a I I have an author page on Facebook, but I don't really use it. Okay. But mostly if if you want to stay in touch, you would do it through my website, AnnaCubana.com. Okay. And also, I assume you could put that in the show notes or something. Yeah, I will. Yeah. And and also I write a weekly newsletter called Cuba Curious on Substack. You can subscribe and you get it in your email each week. And it's that week's top stories in Cuba by Spanish language news sites that are uncensored and telling the truth about what's happening. So, you know, because the regime controls the media. So these are uncensored sources and they really tell you the behind the scenes stories.

SPEAKER_01 30:05

Okay, well, that's great. Thank you so much for sharing your story. It I'm I can't even imagine going through that. And you definitely left an impression uh while you were just telling, even just in this 30 minutes together. So I encourage everybody to go out and grab the book. So and good luck with your the rest of wherever this book takes you and your next book as well.

SPEAKER_00 30:25

Thanks so much, Lynette. And um I love what you're doing, and I think we need the this kind of boost regularly. So I'm glad you're out there doing that for us. Okay, well, it's amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 30:37

Bye bye.