Eating Moors and Christians

Eating Moors and Christians depicts a conflicted history and utilizes the Cuban Revolution as a springboard from which to discuss what is at the center of exile literature—liminality. It explores universal issues as it aims to enlarge the scope of diaspora literature and transcend boundaries of ethnicity, expanding the conversation about the work of Cuban-American writers.

Born in Havana, Cuba, Sandra M. Castillo left the island of her birth with her family in the summer of 1970 on one of the last of President Johnson’s Freedom Flights and grew up in South Florida. Her work explores issues of memory, history, gender and language, but it reflects a personal vision, tied primarily by history, personal and otherwise. She depicts contradictory worlds, the memory of a homeland and memory politics while examining the ordinary reality of exile as well as the duality of existence. Eating Moors and Christians (CavanKerry, 2016) is a startling collection of poems of her life in post-revolutionary Cuba, of exile in Miami, and her journey back, each time unearthing powerful new memories and voices that become part of this great ajiaco of magic, glorious food, and unforgettable people, as well as the haunted spaces between “history and sorrow.”

Eating Moors and Christians is a delicious concoction of imagery and history. These are luminous poems and they will see you home through some dark and bitter nights. Castillo has crafted a startling collection of poems of her life in post-revolutionary Cuba, of exile in Miami, and her journey back, each time unearthing powerful new memories and voices that become part of this great ajiaco of magic, glorious food, and unforgettable people. With Cuba back in the news, these poems are timelier than ever and they resonate with the impending unification of the island and the exiled mainland of Miami. This book is necessary reading here, there, and everywhere.
— Virgil Suarez, author of The Soviet Circus Comes to Havana & Other Stories, 90 Miles, Selected & New Poems, and Landscapes & Dreams

Sandra M. Castillo’s verses navigate the turbulent waters of Cuban history and its realities. Exile, revolution, and homecoming are revealed in imagery that evokes the mysteries of the Cuban heart and soul. The poems are a lyrical excursion through a place that feels at once forbidden and familiar, reflecting the torn feelings of many Cubans, both los de aquí, y los de allá.
— Chantel Acevedo, author of Ghosts & Love Letters and A Falling Star

In Sandra M. Castillo’s new book Eating Moors and Christians, el exilio becomes a place both mythical and real. I love these poems; I love how they move from English to Spanish, from Cuba to Miami, from Miami to the ample country of the heart.
— Pablo Medina, author of The Floating Island, The Man who Wrote on Water, and a memoir, Exiled Memories: A Cuban Childhood

April 2016
124 pp
Trade paper – 6 X 9.25
$16
ISBN 978-1-933880-50-1