There’s been a lot of Cuba in Tacoma lately. There have been concerts by Cuban musicians, Sister Cities events and tonight, there is a free public talk by Cuban-American Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Mirta Ojito.
The talk, “Cuba in My Mind: Memory, Exile and Revolution,” is hosted by the University of Puget Sound as part of the university’s eighth annual Hispanic Film Festival and the Telling Stories/Recovering the Past series (both through Nov. 15).
Ojito came to the United States as a rebellious teenager in the Mariel boat lift, an exodus of thousands encouraged by the Cuban government in 1980 to leave the country. Narrating the events in her 2005 book, “Finding Mañana,” Ojito weaves interviews, political history and her own family memories in an exacting yet compassionate journalistic style, telling the extraordinary stories of those who fled.
The UPS talk will cover those events, the reactions of President Jimmy Carter and the U.S. itself, and how those 125,000 Cubans began their lives in Miami.
A newspaper journalist since 1987, Ojito has written for The Miami Herald, El Nuevo Herald and The New York Times, receiving a shared Pulitzer Prize for a series about race in America. She is also an assistant professor of journalism at Columbia University in New York.
“Cuba in my Mind: Memory, Exile and Revolution” begins at 6 tonight at UPS’s Schneebeck Hall, North 15th Street and Union Avenue, Tacoma. Admission is free. For more details, call 253-879-3555 or go to pugetsound.edu/calendar
The Hispanic Film Series continues at 6:30 p.m. Nov. 14 with “The Mexican Suitcase,” a film about the journey of a suitcase of lost photographic negatives taken during the Spanish Civil War. The screening is at UPS’s Rausch Auditorium in McIntyre Hall. Then at 5 p.m. Nov. 15, filmmaker and Guggenheim scholar Trisha Ziff speaks on “The Maleta Mexicana” in Wyatt Hall, room 101. Both events are free.
Rosemary Ponnekanti: 253-597-8568 rosemary.ponnekanti@thenewstribune.com blog.thenewstribune.com/arts
JOIN THE DISCUSSION | Register here
We welcome comments. Please keep them civil, short and to the point. ALL CAPS, spam, obscene, profane, abusive and off topic comments will be deleted. Repeat offenders will be blocked. Thanks for taking part — and abiding by these simple rules. A thorough explanation of rules of conduct can be found in our Terms of Service. If you have any questions, including why your comment may not be showing immediately after you submit it, be sure to visit the commenting FAQ.