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    Leaving Glorytown: One Boy's Struggle Under Castro
    Unavailable
    Leaving Glorytown: One Boy's Struggle Under Castro
    Unavailable
    Leaving Glorytown: One Boy's Struggle Under Castro
    Ebook233 pages3 hours

    Leaving Glorytown: One Boy's Struggle Under Castro

    By Eduardo F. Calcines

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    In this absorbing memoir, by turns humorous and heartbreaking, Eduardo Calcines recounts his boyhood and chronicles the conditions that led him to wish above all else to leave behind his beloved extended family and his home for a chance at a better future.

    Eduardo F. Calcines was a child of Fidel Castro's Cuba; he was just three years old when Castro came to power in January 1959. After that, everything changed for his family and his country. When he was ten, his family applied for an exit visa to emigrate to America and he was ridiculed by his schoolmates and even his teachers for being a traitor to his country. But even worse, his father was sent to an agricultural reform camp to do hard labor as punishment for daring to want to leave Cuba. During the years to come, as he grew up in Glorytown, a neighborhood in the city of Cienfuegos, Eduardo hoped with all his might that their exit visa would be granted before he turned fifteen, the age at which he would be drafted into the army.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateMar 31, 2009
    ISBN9781429948319
    Unavailable
    Leaving Glorytown: One Boy's Struggle Under Castro
    Author

    Eduardo F. Calcines

    Born in October 1955 in Cienfuegos, Cuba, in the barrio traditionally known as Glorytown, the first child of a truck driver and a homemaker, Eduardo Calcines was very young at the time of Fidel Castro’s abrupt governmental takeover.  Soon, Communism dug its roots deep into the island nation.  Dissidents’ imprisonment and death at the hands of the new totalitarian government became commonplace. Calcines was profoundly scarred by the uncontrollable conditions brought upon him and his entire family, some of whom were dissidents themselves.  From an early age, he rebelled against the oppression and injustice wielded by Castro’s government.  His childhood became a mix of real-world turmoil and a fantasy life that he created for himself on the roof of his grandparents’ home—a rooftop escape underneath the branches of their avocado tree, high above the roosters and chickens, and the worries of daily life. In 1969, at age fourteen, Calcines, along with his father, mother, and sister, finally escaped Castro’s “gulag” for a better life in the United States.  After a five-year stay in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the Calcines family moved south to Tampa, Florida, where Calcines currently resides with his own family.  A successful businessman for over thirty years, Calcines finally decided to tell the story of his childhood in Communist Cuba with his gripping memoir Leaving Glorytown: One Boy’s Struggle Under Castro.  His humorous and enthralling storytelling ability breathes life into the characters and anecdotes that shaped his childhood experiences. This same storytelling ability will lead to follow-up books. One is about coming of age as an immigrant in a new culture. A second is about becoming an adult, dealing with the pain of leaving his family, and coming to terms with his blinding hatred of Castro.

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    Reviews for Leaving Glorytown

    3.5/5

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    • 3/5
      Narrated by the author. Performing his own book in audio format, the author invites listeners into his Cuban childhood and the challenges his family faced under Castro's rule while they awaited their lottery pick to leave for America. He exudes the warmth and strength of his family ties and Glorytown neighbors. Young listeners will also feel his anger and frustration of living under a Communist regime. This is ideal for a family listening experience and discussion, and is best suited for youths grade 5 and up.
    • 4/5
      Eduardo Calcines, now a successful businessman in Florida, relates the story of his boyhood in Cuba. Born to a family on the edge of poverty just a few years prior to the Communist dictator's takeover, Calcines childhood was not idyllic, but in the aftermath as Cubans struggled to survive, certainly seemed that way. As conditions worsened and his parents made the decision to apply for a visa to emigrate to America rather than join the thousands that braved the oceans, Calcines faced ridicule and worse from his classmates and teachers.Vivid descriptions, strong family ties, and a happy ending. Painful to read as many of these memoirs are simply because the topic is so unpleasant, this is an excellent book. Now, as Cuba perhaps sees the light at the end of a very long tunnel, this would be an excellent book for young people who have never thought about what happened in those early years.