Revolutionary Lore

IN HER DEBUT NOVEL, ANA MENÉNDEZ IMAGINES LOVING CHE

ana Menéndez's first novel bears more than a little resemblance to a certain kind of college dorm room: it is filled with pictures of Che Guevara. Out from Atlantic Monthly Press, Loving Che is the story of a young Miami woman's search for her mother, known to her primarily through the mother's diary account of her secret love affair with the toothsome guerrilla leader of the victorious 1959 Cuban revolution (perhaps the only instance in which a child might want details of a parent's sex life). Writing in minimalist prose that leaves much to the imagination and puts her in the company of other Latino writers such as Junot Díaz and Sandra Cisneros, Menendez—herself the daughter of Cuban exiles who settled in Miami—works to capture the spirit of revolution and unrest in Havana in the late 50s and early 60s. Of Fidel Castro and the Argentineanborn Guevara, one character says, "Our best-known Cuban turned out to be an egomaniac and our second-best-known Cuban was a foreigner. Is it any wonder we make such exemplary exiles?" The erotic charge that comes from imagining an affair with Guevara is, for the reader, not without its pleasures; indeed, the yeastiness of the experience is dampened only upon learning that El Comandante was not a devoted bather. HENRY ALFORD

FOR DETAILS, SEE CREDITS PAGE