Embracing America

By Margaret L. Paris

Subjects: Biography, Cuban americans, Cuban Americans, Cuban American women

Description: "After Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba, more than 14,000 children were airlifted to the United States, leaving their parents behind, in a controversial effort to provide them with an opportunity for a better life. This book is Elena Maza's page from that great collective story captured in a series of interviews.". "At the age of thirteen, Elena Maza and two of her sisters came from Cuba and were placed in foster homes in the United States. They were eventually reunited with their parents and youngest sister, who later managed to immigrate. Embracing America is the story of the Maza family's survival and Elena's adaptation to life in the United States. Ironically, Elena left a Marxist revolution to encounter a social one: the civil rights struggle, the anti-Vietnam war insurgency, the women's movement, the sexual revolution, and the drug culture of the 1960s and 1970s.". "Journeying through the Woodstock Nation, rediscovering her Cuban identity, and earning the respect of the Washington and New York arts and community advocacy scenes, Elena Maza emerges as a remarkable woman who was one of the participants in significant historical events of the last century."--BOOK JACKET.