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Real Talk with Tina and Ann
Tina and Ann met as journalists covering a capital murder trial, 15 years ago. Tina has been a tv and radio personality and has three children. Ann has a master's in counseling and has worked in the jail system, was a director of a battered woman's shelter/rape crisis center, worked as an assistant director at a school for children with autism, worked with abused kids and is currently raising her three children who have autism. She also is autistic and was told would not graduate high school, but as you can see, she has accomplished so much more. The duo share their stories of overcoming and interview people who are making it, despite what has happened. This is more than just two moms sharing their lives. This is two women who have overcome some of life's hardest obstacles. Join us every Wednesday as we go through life's journey together. There is purpose in the pain and hope in the journey.
Real Talk with Tina and Ann
How A Young Child Witnessed Exile And Turned Pain Into Power: Ana Hebra Flaster's Story Part 2
An Interview with Author of Property of the Revolution! This is part 2!
A Cuban family escapes with 48 hours’ notice and rebuilds a life defined by work, honor and love, seen through the eyes of a six-year-old who learns to turn pain into power. We trace culture, politics, and identity across borders, and why telling the truth preserves dignity.
• culture clash between performance and belonging
• abuela’s wisdom and loud, loving households
• tía’s hidden diploma and the right to keep education
• father’s honor, hard work and unexpected tenderness
• political rifts, CDR pressure and family fights
• racism, lost shifts and choosing dignity
• shame to pride in language, food and music
• citizenship, commitment and becoming American
• speaking up at college against stereotypes
• trauma resurfacing in motherhood and healing
• returning to the old house and reclaiming memory
• Cuba’s current crisis, exodus and silenced voices
Please get Ana's book, Property of the Revolution. It is a must-read. Visit anacubana.com — the audiobook is narrated by Ana.
Welcome back to Real Talk with Tina and Ann. I am Ann. Last week we began an unforgettable conversation with Anna Hebrew Flaster, author, journalist, and storyteller. Her family left Cuba and had 48 hours to get out. And they had to and they went to the United States. They were not safe. They were scared for their lives. And they ended up on our shores in the United States. It's really an amazing story. It's one that I think everybody needs to hear. When I think of their story, I think of courage and bravery. And it's a level of fear that I think most of us don't even understand. Last week we talked about the reasons that brought them and we told some stories. We we told some horrifying stories in Cuba. And part two, we pick up right where we left off with her mother and her sister's story in strength. And we talk more about her abuela, and we learn more about her dad, her actual tender dad. It's really a great story. We dive deeper into what it means to rebuild, to reclaim your voice and to carry your family's legacy forward. This is a story that touched me. I learned more about the historical aspect of it. And I learned it from a six-year-old's perspective because she was six when this happened. So let's return to their story. Thank you for listening. And this is part two.
SPEAKER_01:We arrived right around Christmas time and she said asked us kids to translate Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. And we explained what it was. And she said, So, so wait a minute, you mean so this this reindeer has no friends because he's different, but then because he can get them out of this jam, because he can do something that they can't do, everybody loves him. And uh we're like, yep, that's makes sense to us. That's what we're seeing out there in the world, in this new world. And she said, Caballeros, gentlemen, I think this country is going to be all about performance. And I remember her saying that. I wasn't sure what she meant. Later on, I understood. And in in a way, it's a very accurate distinction in the way that those two the two cultures view the world. You know, Americans, show me what you got, show me what you can do. Cuba, Cubans, Latinos are more about who who are you, what have you done for your family? Um, are you a decent person? Interior emotions and dedication to your family, I think. So performance just wasn't at the top of the value uh scale. Like independence, being independent is so important here in the United States, and it's just that wasn't valued in our culture in the same way. And in fact, when you were called Tueres muy independiente, you're very independent. That was a negative thing.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, well, she was very wise um before her time. And I think that uh she saw things that I don't even think that US born people saw.
SPEAKER_01:No, I uh I she just had that. I used to think of that that it was just because she was my mother that I saw so many amazing things in her personality, and but now I know that she just was truly exceptional in as a human being and as and her her natural intelligence and her interest in doing being a good human being, speaking the truth and and telling her truth. I felt I feel very lucky to have had her as my mom. Yeah, she seemed like a really great lady.
SPEAKER_00:And your Aunt Tia, she was very fascinating to me. She was a very complex woman, and I liked her story a lot, how she wanted to get her master's degree in math, but faced expulsion when she refused to join the militia. And she did have a degree, though. And in your country, from what I understand in Cuba, you weren't allowed to take anything for gain. So what did she do? Because I love this.
SPEAKER_01:So she and this is another example that I think Americans that resonate with Americans, you know, we're talking about performance, right? Right, right. She performed and she had evidence of what she had earned, her her diploma. Yeah. And what I'm getting from American readers is store her story really gets to them because when we earn something, that's ours. And education really is one of those things that when you earn it, no, nobody should be able to take it away from you. And as with your home, as with private property, when you left, you couldn't take anything of value with you. And a document like that was valuable, therefore it could not go out. So she decided she would risk it all. And uh a neighbor who was a seamstress helped her tear it into it, it was a PhD in education. She wanted to teach in the United States, needed documentation, she knew. They they cut it into strips and created a full panel bra, and that's how she snuck it out. But my mother was vehemently opposed to the plan. Said they're gonna if they catch you, you'll end up in jail, you'll never be able to leave, don't do that. My aunt was adamant. And once my aunt decided something that was not was gonna get in her way. And she made it, she she was able to teach in the United States because of that document, proving what she could do. And she taught Spanish at Nashville High School for 30 years.
SPEAKER_00:When she told, I think it was the superintendent, her whoever she was across from, when she was trying to get the teaching job and they wanted proof of her credentials, you know, that she had gotten a diploma. She's like that she had it, but they were in pieces. I mean, I laughed out loud. I mean, it was just so funny to read her story because I mean, she read, she learned English from a dictionary, you know? And yeah, she and she talked her way into the job. You were so surrounded by strong women, and all three of them were very different. And your mommy and your uh aunt had very different opinions on things. They they were it was a very divisive environment, I would say, in some ways. So can can you talk about what the politic political differences did to your family and what it did to you as you heard all these opinions around you? It must have been hard to sort.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, uh, but it showed us that you could disagree passionately and then love each other. Okay. That's great. That's one's one thing I saw. Yeah. And you spoke your mind. And in our house, as loud and complicated as it was, you always knew what any anyone was thinking, what anybody was feeling. It was there. And with politics, I mean, in in Cuba, my mother had been the the one who had risked her life for the revolution. But after the revolution, my aunt became passionate about the revolution and my uncle too. And they took a lot longer to see what was happening than my mother. And so the two of them would fight then too. Um, my aunt wanted my mother to she she was the lead volunteer getter in the name in the barrio. And she was always pursuing people to volunteer them for work after the revolution because every barrio had a defense committee for the defense of the revolution, a building with a a president, and the president spied, you know, it was a way of the c of the revolution keeping tabs on what was happening in the neighborhood. But one of the things that had to happen was you had to volunteer to clean the streets, um, do night watch duty. And my aunt rounded people up for that. My mother wanted nothing to do with it, and they would fight even back then. And then when they got here, one of the struggles was that my father didn't want us sending money to family in Cuba. Not his family, his family had all come out, but my mother and my aunt's family was still there. He felt that sending money was first of all, we didn't have any money to send. Second, it was going into the dictatorship's hands by sending money back. And when when my aunt and grandmother were able to go back for the first time during the president the Carter presidency, my father was vehemently opposed because they were they were paying the Cuban government to go back. And that was right into the dictatorship's hands and empowering the dictatorship. My mother had to run interference between my aunt and my mu grandmother and my father all day, every day until they left and then they came back and things calmed down. But those are examples of just our family it wasn't a picnic in that house. I mean, it's not like everybody was of the same mind. You had a lot of strong opinions, um, lots of arguing. My parents were never even that after my grandmother died, after my aunt and uncle moved into my cousin's home, my parents lived alone for the first time as a married couple. They had been married 45 years, they had never lived alone together. Oh my um, and that's in toward the end of the book. And I I do describe how it was they were acting like newlyweds.
SPEAKER_02:Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_01:They've been together for 45 years, but with all those other people in the same house. And that's a that's kind of thing like an American couple, they're not gonna put up with that. Right. Um that's that's a lot of loss of privacy and dependence, all those things that don't matter in the same way in in other cultures.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And it was really interesting. There were a lot of things about your dad that I really liked, and hard work was one. And he really that meant so much to him. He would work 16-hour days and then get up and do it again the next day. And your mom, too. I mean, she became a manager of the CBS that you talked about in New England, and your dad said that um hard work doesn't kill you, but bitterness grows when you see other families together, walking together, playing. And it seemed to be that there was such a trade for your dad of, you know, this providing and making it in the United States. Uh, financially, the trade was, you know, giving up the time with the family. I mean, it just seemed like it was so hard for him. Did it really add to who he was? Yeah. Uh, you know, he macho guy, right?
SPEAKER_01:So strong jock. He played baseball in the United States professionally. That was what he could do for his family. He wasn't educated. He'd only gone to, I think, sixth grade. He wasn't educated, but he could work as a soft, and he did. You know, he he made that comment to me years later when we were talking about what it was like to work that hard every day that hard, just sleeping in order to go back to work. But he was so happy, he said, to be able to work, to make life better for us, which he couldn't do in Cuba. Right. Right. There was t there were tangible results for his efforts. So he was seeing us in in in new clothes. He was, you know, we were out of Salvation Army clothes. Now we now we could buy clothes. Um, he was being able to, you know, we could have cookies every now and then. Uh we could have a Coke in the house every now and then. And those things really mattered to him to be able to provide. It's that's freedom too.
SPEAKER_00:And your dad was also, he had a gentle side to him, who not only provided, but he protected his family and he supported the strong women in his life, which I thought that was really an amazing part of who he was and allowed them to be who they were. You know, your mom, like you mentioned earlier, and people just have to read this part of the story because it's just so I just pictured your mom, you know, just leaving the house and, you know, like she was just so strong, and she went up to that microphone and she said what she had to say. And then she gets back into the house and your dad just says, you know, only you could insult a hundred people and get them to applaud. You know, I mean your dad's so true. It that was so cool that he wouldn't have done that, but he respected and that she wanted to do it and that um he supported her and he was so reserved. And he even built an aviary for all of his canaries. I mean, what the heck? I mean, he was just uh he had such a tenderness to him. Uh, what was it like to see that in your dad and in a man?
SPEAKER_01:Uh first, thank you for for getting what I was laying down there, you know, for seeing him the way that I saw him. And, you know, this is what I want readers to feel is that love and that that appreciation for who these people were as human beings and and sharing these people with my with my readers. I want them to have to experience these personalities. Poppy was so confusing because he was so hard and tough and macho. And then you'd see him in the basement with this little bird in his in his gnarled hands. And I I I describe how one day, you know, I saw him carrying this bird that had died. I could see he he was coming to tears and and he stroked the bird and the feathers, and he said, Don't you see this this was a very innocent creature and and he was depending on me and and I was taking care of him. And that summed up how he lived his life. You know, we were depending on him, and he was going to take care of us, and he was if that meant that he couldn't see us and be with us as much as he wanted to, that's what he was going to do. Um, but he he he loved animals and birds in particular, and everybody would bring in birds, you know. The kid, you know, kids find birds everywhere everywhere out of something that fell out of its nest, and he would help birds recuperate in our house. There was always some bird recuperating in our house.
SPEAKER_00:That's just so precious.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and that's so yeah, he was this really tough guy, and and I loved that I could see that that he could show me that vulnerability, and he he he would show that vulnerability to anybody, I think, if they were willing to look for it.
SPEAKER_00:Well, you said, you know, you mentioned how he was a professional baseball player and he did play in the US too, and he always proved himself with brawn and determination. And I love the story that you shared about him getting into a fight at work and your mom reminding him that fists don't work in America, but his response was, I can get another job, but I can't buy honor. And to me, that was just so powerful. Do you think that that was what drove your dad honor?
SPEAKER_01:Yes, yes, and it's it's a perfect example of he never got it, by the way, Anne. He never got that that macho thing doesn't work here, right up until the very end of his life. He lived to be 91. But that was his in the barrio, you proved yourself with your fists. And that's what he did when a racist coworker insulted us to his face and and you know, called called our family all kinds of things, and he couldn't take it. And he lost this very valuable shift that he had had because of that altercation, because management sided with the American worker. But uh, but if you remember in that scene, the American worker in the hearing says that he was the one who started the fight. And he, when my father was telling me the story, he said, I gave him a lot of credit for saying that because he could have lied and he didn't. And that's the kind of thing that I saw these viejos doing all the time was the seeing the humanity and the goodness, even in a hard situation like that, which I I find helps you get through life because it's a way of staying connected to people. You know that even bad people have that potential within them. And he he that was a moment of total grace. Yeah, he never really accepted my mother's interpretation and and advice about holding back on your physical reaction. Uh, there were other fights. He had other fights. It was a problem. It was a problem for my mother. My mother had to run interference there. Poppy just thought that he could fix things. I'll tell you a story. He uh my nephew, my sister's son, was 13. He was working at a grocery store. He complained to my father that he wasn't getting enough hours at the grocery store. And my father went to the grocery store and asked to speak to the manager and said, you know, uh, why why you know give Nick more hours? And the manager said, Oh, I I don't I didn't know that Nick needed more hours. I'm happy to give Nick more hours. So Poppy went home and he called my sister, so proud of himself because he had solved Nicholas's problem. And my sister was irate. Poppy, don't you understand? You you you're you're meddling in his issues, and and then he called me. They both called me that day, mad at each other. And um, I I explained to my father, Poppy, in the United States, you don't do that because that's Nicholas's independence. He's learning and he's supposed to fix his own problems. And Poppy said, Stupid, I'm I'm his grandfather. I can if I can help, why am I not? Why can't I help? Yeah. So it's a way that was when he was probably 80. No, no, sorry, sorry, close to 90.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Well, his protection for his family resonated in every part of who he absolutely was. And he also believed in that for other people, you know. I mean, even that person that he walked off the ball field because in protest for that person who was being had racial and in protest, you know, he uh he really stood up for what he believed in. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:Uh and you know, you're right, as different as they were, all of them had that in common. The dis the incident you're describing happened in the 50s when my father was playing for the farm leagues in in the south, and Felipe Alu, who became a very famous ball player, was Papi was pitching to Felipe on the other team. And Felipe, as he approached the plate, was pelted with rotten tomatoes and jeers. He was black, a black Dominican, and it was from his own team. And my father couldn't handle that. And my father complained, and the manager, my father said, I this is wrong. I'm not gonna pitch if this is what pitch you're done on the team. And Poppy said, Okay, I'm done.
SPEAKER_00:That's really something there were there were so many stories like that that were woven throughout the book. I wanted to touch on something that really is an ugly truth in our country, and it could have happened in the 70s and it can happen in 2025. But, you know, your mom had legitimately earned her way to into that job at CPS, and a man yelled at her that his wife had applied for the job and and your mom stole it from her. That's what he was just saying, and you stole it from her. So, you know, she didn't let it stop her, and of course, she ended up getting a manager position and the biggest CBS in that area. But, you know, I would love to hear what has life been like for you with that kind of hate, and you've experienced some of it yourself.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, uh, not as much as my my um mother, father, the elders, because one, they always had their accent. Two, uh, my father was a dark-skinned Cuban. So, and he worked with uh often less educated people who weren't gonna hide their their bigotry, you know, or they weren't gonna they didn't have to hide anything. So for me, um, it snuck up on me often, you know. I so people look at me now and I appear completely American. I I could I could just be Italian American or whatever, but when I was growing up, I was outside all the time. I was very dark. I was uh often with my father, and so and and my name sounded weird to people and I had an accent at the beginning. And so people we encountered situations where people reminded us. We we I would think that I was totally American, and then somebody would remind me that I'm not like them. Um I had I once made um what was it? It was it was all state corpse, and a friend's mother took me aside and said, You only got that because you're a minority. And uh there were things like my brother was kicked out of somebody's pool once. Nobody else got kicked out. And things like that would happen. Things like that would happen. And I remembered just as my mother, when that thing happened to her that day, when that guy called her a spick in front of everybody at the store, she came home and she said what happened to her little family that gathered around her and supported her. And I I I know that we had that at home, and that's the beauty of that immigrant family structure is generally you can come home and compare notes and shore each other up. I I pity the poor immigrant, refugee, migrant, whatever who's alone.
SPEAKER_00:That makes a lot of sense. Um, and you know, I wanted to tell this, yeah, you tell this great story about being in third grade at Christmas Eve and your family was all eating together, and it actually was making me laugh while I was reading this. You said everything about that moment screamed that you were different. That part what really hurt me to read that part, that you weren't from here. And there weren't many Latinos in New Hampshire, and no, your house was a whirlwind of culture. I mean, let's, you know, it it was. And at some point, you even said that you even felt ashamed of your heritage. Can you talk about what led you to that feeling?
SPEAKER_01:I wanted to be like everybody else. I wanted, I wanted physically to be whiter, to have little freckles on my nose, like all my my friends who I thought were just so beautiful. I wanted everywhere we went, we went in a huge crowd. We were always to like together. There were too many of us when we went somewhere out somewhere. We were speaking Spanish and people would look and some people would look and say things that weren't nice. And so, of course, I didn't want that. I wanted to be like everybody else. I think that there's a a stage in your life when when you are embarrassed by those differences is of course later on they became badges of honor for me, that I could have two cultures, that I could have speak two languages. You know, my the vehicles were funny about that. If they knew that you were embarrassed, they would speak more loudly. They wanted you to deal with it. Okay. And my mother would my mother, if there's a scene in the in Property of the Revolution where my mother is blaring her her Cuban albums, and the windows are open, and I'm mortified, and I'm going around closing them so that people won't hear the strange music coming from our house. And she goes around and opens them all and says, Don't tell me you're ashamed of this. And as she's as she's saying that, she's, you know, of course I couldn't tell her that. She knew that I was ashamed of it. That's why I was all the windows. And it was only much later that I I realized that we had something in that house that was so different, yes, but it was so different that it was attracting a lot of people. Our house was full of americanitos all the time. They were they were curious about what was going on and the food that we were eating and the music and how you know how many mothers are there in this house.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, they wanted to know if you always had a party at your house, but you were like, No, it's just four Cubans talking. I mean, I just I laughed.
SPEAKER_01:That you know what? That should have been the the the um title of that chapter, four Cubans Talking, because everybody would say, I can't tell you how many times I answered the phone in those days we had the landline. Is is there a party at your house? Well, just the four VMs sitting around the table talking in their normal tone, but they all talked at the same time. So it sounded like there were eight people or 12 people.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I grew up in an Italian family, so I I relate, nobody ever just talked. They would yell.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. Yeah. I wonder, you know, I've often thought, I wonder if there's deafness in our our culture or something, and that's why we all speak so loudly, because we do. Oh my gosh, it's just a cultural thing.
SPEAKER_00:It is a cultural thing, because I know because of my Italian elders, I guess. I mean, you went into I went to my 90th um aunt's birthday, and uh it everybody, there were so many people, and they were all yelling at each other, but nobody was mad. They were no. So don't be afraid. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Now I do want to uh you became a U.S. citizen five years after you arrived in this country. What did it mean to your family?
SPEAKER_01:You know, Cubans had at the time, because the American administration recognized that Cuba's people who were leaving were really fleeing a political disaster and and oppression, political oppression. Um, and so they had a what was called the Cuban Adjustment Act, and it allowed you to a faster way to citizenship and still exists today, actually. Um, and my aunt was on that schedule. So there are mo there are milestones and things you have to do during that uh process. And she made sure that all of us were doing, you know, all of the paperwork was in place. The day that we could apply for citizenship, we all applied. And um what it meant was that I mean, my my mother and my aunt, my father less so maybe, my uncle maybe less so. When they came, unlike some exiles, they said, if we're coming, we're coming forever. We're we're not going back. We're going to become Americans, and that means we're committed. And that was part of their commitment to becoming America. Americans. That didn't mean that they accepted and loved every part of America, every every value in America, but they held on to what they loved about their culture and and appreciated and loved and were so patriotic. No, I don't know if you remember, I think this is still in was still in the book because I had to I had to the publisher, you know, we were trying to cut back things in the book in order to have a slim memoir. And there was a scene the day that we were finally allowed to go and and and we had a court hearing, the whole family was there. They had dressed my in our best clothes. My brother was in a suit. So imagine a an eight-year-old kid in a suit. He was miserable, and he he yelled out, I don't want to be an American, I don't want to be here, you know, and my because he was in a suit and my aunt grogged him gagged him and said, You sit still, you will be an American an American soon, whether you like it or not.
SPEAKER_00:Oh my goodness. No, I don't think that's in the book, but that's really funny. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It's the same thing. Actually, when we were in the airport being interrogated on the way out of Cuba, and uh, because they made it really hard for you and you had to sleep there, he was screaming, I want to go home. I want I don't want to leave, I want to go home, I want my house. And my mother and father were petrified that they were going to use that as an excuse because they would use whatever excuse they felt like using to keep people.
SPEAKER_00:I want to touch on some other things that were going on in Cuba at that time. Um, you lived your, you know, it was a history lesson for me. This was really a history lesson. And in a different way, because I knew a lot of it, but you know, reading it from your perspective and what was going on with hiding under tables and living through the Cuban Missile Crisis and fighter jets overhead and your father realizing that Cuba had become the center of global nuclear standoff, you talk about neighbors turning on one another, civil rights unrest. You talk about starvation and rationing books, all of that made your parents very protective over you and the things that changed you. And then you moved, and then it also, you know, they became protective over your heritage. And as you aged and reached the point of independence, dating college, it was such a huge adjustment for both of your parents and you. And your dad especially held tight to tradition. A girl doesn't date like that, you know? And there wasn't even a word for boyfriend, you say. And I I mean, I laughed at that, but it showed how much he cared. But I can imagine it made things tricky. What was it like trying to balance your desire your desire for independence with their more traditional expectations?
SPEAKER_01:It was a daily battle front, a daily daily battle, a daily um pushing against the the barriers that they wanted to keep in place. Although, when it came to education, as you know, my my my aunt, my grandmother, my Mother were all teachers. And they they understood that I wanted to leave for college. And my father didn't. So they became a united front against my father. And that's how I was able to go to Smith College because that was two hours away. My father was like, I how can school when you're not even married? My unmarried daughter leave my house for months at a time. And my grandmother, my mother, and my aunt worked on him, worked on him until he finally agreed. But it was all the time. It was, you know, it was, it came down even for um sleepovers, they couldn't understand. Why would Americans send their children to sleep at other people's houses? What was that all? Why was that was why would Amer an American send their little five-year-old girl sleep at a house with who knows how many older brothers and brothers and cousins? And do we even know those people? They would do that maybe to for a relative. Right. Things like that that just don't add up. And then you get you you end up being the interpreter of cultures, you know. Right. So I'd have to interpret for my boyfriend what it would mean if he did this or that at home when he came to pick me up, and and why he had to, you know, abide by whatever the expectations were. Yeah. And why I had to have to talk to my father about how this boyfriend was behaving. And so always interpreting, always interpreting and hot in the middle.
SPEAKER_00:Well, speaking of having a voice, I mean, you were starting to find your voice as a young adult, you know, and you went to Smith College. You worked incredibly hard to get there. And you were in a class where they were misrepresenting women and everything, basically, that happened in Cuba. And the professor actually said that women only had two jobs, seamstresses or being a seamstress or a prostitute. And of course, you know, your mom and your aunt were neither of those. So you know that it wasn't, you knew that it wasn't true. You kept trying to correct. And he didn't want to have the conversation in front of the other students, but was willing to talk about it in his office. But this was a higher education institution that bragged about critical thinking that wouldn't let you speak. Even in even the head of the department dismissed you. What was that like for you as you were just really starting to find your voice out there?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I felt like I had lost that little battle. I felt like I was really tough to go in and make my points. And as you know, uh he said, I was basically trying to get attention on the professor. It was a different person, the chair was a different person than the professor who had made those statements. And I was trying to get his attention on that and and to correct the professor and get the professor to say these things more carefully, more accurately. And he basically said, um, you know, you shouldn't worry about Smithy's being corrupted in a 48-minute lecture. They've lived 21 years of privilege, they can handle this. And um, I I knew that I wasn't going to get anywhere and I left. And I felt, well, I got my butt kicked, you know. I I didn't do what I wanted to do. I didn't convey my my truth well enough. And then I realized years later that that they were just and I still run into this where there are people who don't want to see, hear, think about that other story about Cuba, you know, that that they they believe that the revolution of freed oppressed people, that this is a Marxist revolution, that was a great thing for Cuba. And and and if I tell my version of Cuba before the revolution, and they don't want to know it. They don't want to know it. So then I realized I hadn't really lost. I had done what I needed to do. Yeah. And it it was an unwinnable thing, but I had at least made him listen and said, that's wrong. The least we can do is say that that's wrong. That's not true. And that by the way, there were all other facts or other points in that lecture that were totally off the mark, totally inaccurate, and perpetuating the version of their truth that they wanted to and and and all these smithies were sitting there writing down everything.
SPEAKER_00:And I knew that that they were being fed a an incomplete story. Yeah, it must have been so hard for people to watch people around you taking notes and writing things down of this man that was saying things that were so untrue about your own culture, and you weren't even able to speak about what really happened. I mean, you did live through it, you knew what happened.
SPEAKER_01:I knew there were women, there were lots of entrepreneurial women in our barrio. There were women who had little businesses. There was a woman who had a little um, she made bags, just um paper bags. And she had her whole family working for her. And there there were other women in the neighborhood. There was a towel factory nearby, and they worked at the towel factory. There were women who worked at the cannery where my father worked. There were teachers, there were professors, female professors, there were female uh doctors. So don't tell me and don't tell this entire group of students that women could be seamstresses or prostitutes and think that that that is acceptable. Right. That's so belittling of who the women were. Yeah, I wasn't I I wasn't gonna sit through that and and I I was just irate about that.
SPEAKER_00:Did you go back to his class?
SPEAKER_01:Well, for I wasn't in that that professor's class. The reason I got invited to that that that I went to that class is because this is my senior year. Friends of mine had were in the class and had already listened to this professor's I guess I missed that class. Yeah, and she and they said two friends, they said, come to the lecture. You're not gonna believe, because they had heard my stories. They're not gonna believe the of Cuba that they're that we're getting.
SPEAKER_00:And your brother had a very similar experience in school where your brother had a uh teacher who was doing a lesson on racial discrimination, actually pointed at him and another Latino student and used racial slurs, which we will never say on this show, and then told them to just lighten up, you know, and but your mom, talk about Mama Bear. I mean, forgot about that one. She went straight to the principal's office, took the day from work, you know, went there and demanded that the teacher apologize in front of the entire class. And he did the moment that your mom stood up, not just for your son, his son, uh, not just for her son, but for every kid who's ever been made to feel small or unseen, was such a defining example of courage and pride. I thought that that was really something. And then, you know, I saw that same strength in you. You were a tennis player who once cut your hand before a really big match. And instead of sitting out, a friend told you to use that pain to win, and you did. I mean, you wrote all along, I'd been using the pain of being different, of being the outsider to fuel my determination to prove myself. Can you talk about that? How you learned to turn pain into power and how that connects to the courage that you saw in your mom?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I I we were rounded with these examples of courage every day, even though we didn't couldn't have articulated that. And so, what was the courage they were showing? They were showing a courage of being foreigners and just forging forward, making a new life, and it was never easy for them. And so when I would counter difficulties, I dug into what I felt was part of my soul, my heritage, my blood, my flesh and blood. I mean, I was seeing that every day. It was impossible not to be inspired by that. And that day, that example was just one that really stuck out because if you remember, where we were playing was a very wealthy town, or to me, it was a very wealthy, fancy town. And I always thought of myself as very working class. And and I I want a while I wanted to be part of that wealthy American world and find my way into whatever I saw as this middle class American world. And that was part of the win to say that I could be this girl who goes to the tennis club all winter long and is in perfectly white, you know, tennis outfits and and I can do it. Yeah, the blue the racket was full of blood. My my skirt was full of blood.
SPEAKER_00:But but he didn't tell you to just he didn't tell you to just, you know, wrap it up and go sit down on the bench and you know, it was get back out there and go through the pain. I I thought that that was perfect.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, he he he was a hockey player and that was what he did. And so he Yeah. And you have to do that in life, right? You have to it has it's gonna hurt, but we just keep going, going, we're gonna, we're gonna lick our wounds and we're gonna, you know, recover. But sometimes you have to get in there and fight.
SPEAKER_00:I wanted to touch on a story that I don't I can't even tell you what it did to me when I read about how there was a woman. Your mom was in the food line or something, and there was a woman that had thrown lentils on the ground that she had been given because they were full of worms, and your mom was just picking them up and she boiled the bugs and the worms out to serve your family. And it just said so much to me about the hunger that your family must have endured. And I wondered if that did anything to you emotionally.
SPEAKER_01:When that happened, I was too young. I didn't have a memory of that. I did I did have memories of um standing in line and or sitting at the curb with all these women and children, right? Those are things that were new after the revolution. Nobody stood in line before the revolution. Nobody had a a ration book um before the revolution. Um so all of that was new. And I didn't experience hunger. I don't remember hunger that way. Okay. I never I know when we c came to the United States, we were hungry too. And we well, hungry for not hungry the because we had no food, but we couldn't eat just anything. So my there's a scene where my my cousin and I are making a game out of eating bread with sugar on it after dinner because we we were still hungry, and we played he played so see how many bites, the most number of bites you could take out of that little piece of bread to make it last. That was our competition. We each had a piece. In Cuba, my parents endured hunger, and I know that my brother endured hunger because there's a scene at the beach where his binky was all chewed up because they would put the binky in his mouth to keep him from crying because he was hungry. Right and they didn't have anything to eat, so he would chew on the binky, and and the only way and then when they would feed him, if they took when they took the spoon out, he would start screaming again because he was so hungry. So they'd stick the the binky back in. So there were plenty of signs and plenty of ways where not having material needs affected us later on. But you know, you didn't waste anything, you appreciated everything, and you uh you you savored the treats and you you s you savored the the fruits of the labor of your elders that were giving you these these material benefits. And you know, there's a lot people say, Oh, who cares, you know, whether a person's getting cook a kid's getting cookies or well, you know, that's freedom too, right? To be able to work for your family and and be able to take them for an ice cream and earn enough that you can buy your family an ice cream and not be told you can't earn any more than this. This is this is what you get. You can't work any harder, you can't earn any more. Everybody's gonna be the same.
SPEAKER_00:And you took um I'm sure you took what you learned from your childhood with everything, and now you you end up getting married to Andy. Uh and Andy was not probably what your parents expected for you to marry, but uh they really embraced him and your abuela too. I mean, I just thought that that was such a beautiful part of this story that they how much that they accepted him. And your abuela even changed her room for you. Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_01:So Andy's Jewish. Yeah. And we were raised Catholic. And uh when Andy would come to visit, uh, my he would stay in my grandmother's room, and my grandmother would sleep in my room with me. And she had crucifixes on her wall and palm fronds from the previous Tom Sunday, and a picture of a bleeding heart, you know, very Catholic images. And and Andy would sleep in there. And one day she said, You know, why why aren't you guys getting married? You've been dating long enough. And I explained, you know, he has a different point of view on religion. We're trying to figure that out. You know, for example, Jews don't really feel comfortable with a cross. When we see a cross, we're very comfortable. We feel protected and soothed. That's not what Jews feel when they see a cross, because it's a symbol of a group that persecuted them. So the next time Andy came, he he we met at breakfast the next morning and he said, Anna, your grandmother's room, there's no crucifix. The picture of hippie Jesus is gone, the the bleeding heart thing with the thorns in it, everything's gone. And I realized what she had done. And when I asked her, she said, I Chica, you know, I I don't want him to feel uncomfortable. I'm gonna put all of that stuff back, but I don't want him to feel uncomfortable. And I realized that he had been this is a woman who read the her Bible, the Bible was open every day in in the little dining area that we had. And she read, she was very spiritual, very religious. But somehow her Catholic daughter marrying a Jewish guy in this foreign land where nothing made sense to her. That was just one more thing that didn't make sense. But she was gonna work with it, she was gonna roll with it.
SPEAKER_00:I think that that's awesome. That is so awesome that she was able to do that. She was really something, your obuila. Yeah, she really, she really did. She she always had a special place for Andy, that's for sure. I want to move into something that when you became a mother, life suddenly grew quiet for you. And you'd been raised in a world filled with sound, family voices, your boila, your mommy, and your tia. And now there was stillness, and sometimes, you know, that quiet can feel peaceful, but it can also echo with memories that we haven't yet faced. And you've shared that when your daughter reached the same age that you did when you when the trauma began, depression surfaced and some of that trauma, I think, really started coming up. What did that season teach you about how the past continues to live within us?
SPEAKER_01:Well, there are two aspects to that answer because when I was first mar when I first became a mother, the past came calling for me when I saw that my household had no resemblance to what I knew to be a household. It was a mother, a father, and a baby. What did I know? I mean, I needed all these women with me. So the past was saying, this is what I was. Now this is what you are. What are you gonna do about that? How are you gonna, you know, I thought, I thought everything was fine. Turns out it wasn't fine because now I had to redefine what family meant. Could I make family here? Could this be what I loved? What could that could I ever do that? And then years later, when my daughter was my age, the age I've been, she was six. So I I had postpartum depression then. And I I rolled with it. I remember telling my mother, I don't feel right. She said, You'll be fine. You've got me, you don't need a psychiatrist. And that's very much at the time, especially the Cuban approach to things, and maybe here in the United States too, but even more so in in our culture, I think. That that when I when Natalia was about to go to kindergarten, I was I didn't know I was depressed. I thought I was just worried about her readiness for kindergarten. I other people were getting their kids evaluated. I said, Well, I'll get my kid evaluated too. And and um the psychiatrist said, Your daughter's bright, she's fine, she's ready to go, but I'm worried about you. I've given her my whole history. And Andy and I were talking with her, and she said, Explain to me what it is that that has you so concerned. And I started describing how life could be so hard at that age, how the world is so hard, and and I broke down in hysterical sobs, which is so not me. And she said, I think this has to do with the same trauma you experienced when you were your daughter's age. I said, What trauma? And she said, Well, when you lose your house, your family, your world, your culture, your language, all overnight, as you described, happened when you were that age. That's trauma. And I said, No, that's not that that's ridiculous. That's that's another time that the past comes and sits in your lap and says, I'm here. Yeah. You know, this, this, that, these two things don't add up. What are you going to do about it? And if you don't have that in your past, you're not going to have that uh kind of moment. And it's it, they are reminders. Remember, we were talking earlier about how you can feel really American, right? I came when I was six. I feel so American. And then every now and then one of these things happens and it says, uh one of these things happens, and it says, you're not, you aren't from here. You have a different history, you have a different, and it just makes you in a way go back to that. And and and yes, you have to kind of look at that injustice that happened and what it cost, and and then you have to come out on the other side of it. It's gonna be a process. You might feel bad and and scared and anxious, and on the other side of it, what you get is wow. Yeah look what you look what human beings can do for themselves and for each other and their children and the next generation. And look what freedom and the need for freedom can do.
SPEAKER_00:You said so much there. Oh my gosh. And I think that one of the other things, because I I mean, you had a hard time surrendering to all of that. It it really felt like, but when you went to Cuba to visit, uh, you picked weeds and pebbles from your front yard when your house had been claimed as property of the revolution, and it had that had when you left, it had had that banner, you know, across houses where that would happen. So you went back to that house and you even went in that house. I was really wondering how that changed you.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you know, you you had asked the four about the past, the past and the present, and and that was a moment where the past was the present. So I went back, as you said, okay. That's great way to the thing to the barrio. I went back to the barrio, and I had brought this is how much I had been thinking about what it would be like to go back to my house and and reclaim something about what had been lost. And like you said, you know, the the title of the book, Property of the Revolution, the revolution took our house, kicked us out of our house, and put that banner across our door, sealing it shut. Property of the revolution. That was the last time I'd been there. But I had my little baggie and I picked up the little rocks and pieces of grass and put it into the baggie because I was going to bring that home, a piece of of my my past. And the woman saw me and she said, What are you doing? Now, this is a woman who's who had been given our house because what the revolution did is when people left, they gave loyalists your house and everything that was in it. Well, the guards took whatever they wanted and then whatever so she had really no connections to the neighborhood and still didn't really have, but she was a human being and kind. And rather than thinking, what does this Cuban American woman want here? I'm not gonna be nice to her, she let me into the house. She invited the house.
SPEAKER_00:That was amazing.
SPEAKER_01:And to be in that room and see the old kitchen where our dog used to I remember our dog was always under that stove, and and and that little it was just like three little rooms. And to be in there was amazing. And I I she had it was such a clean house. It was a tiny poor, but it was so clean. She had she it made me very happy to see how much she loved being there. She had little curtains attacked to the wall around this one little window, and it just made me happy to but but that was the past all and the present all at once. That that horrible night and then this wonderful day all together.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that was I could picture you just feeling everything from that when you walked into that house. Did you walk back into the United States different?
SPEAKER_01:Yes. I walked back into the United States deep, more appreciative of what my parents had done for us than ever. Because I ran into one of my friends on that visit, and I asked, I I I don't write about this in the book, but I said to her, um, you know, we were just chatting, and she looked around the barrio and she said, you know, I'm glad that that everything went that way for you because this isn't living. This is not life. This isn't a life, but we're what that was in 1999. Okay. And and Cubans are living their worst crisis in history right now. Everybody wants to blame me and the Americans want to say it's still the embargo, it's not the embargo. And no Cuban believes that it's the embargo. It's a system that doesn't work and that makes you stay silent the whole time and not criticize and not even hope or dream. And that's what she was conveying to me and and what I knew my parents had given us by giving everything up. They'd given us hope, they'd given us freedom, a dream to study what we wanted to study, think what we wanted to think. Uh that those things are priceless and you don't appreciate it. You you you might think you're appreciating it, you don't appreciate it the same way, cannot appreciate it the same way as someone who's lost it, or when you've seen it up close and someone who's lost it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you went back and you saw what your life could have been like if you would have stayed.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. And I'm I'm reading about it because I I uh write Cuba Curious, which is a newsletter on Substack that covers I cover human rights situations in Cuba and and the movement, the freedom movement, the pro-democracy movement in Cuba. So I'm reading about it all day long. And I'm I'm reminded all day long. And I actually have to take a step back because it's too much. Okay. I just wrote a a week or two ago that I needed to cover more uplifting news because it is too difficult for me to live in this.
SPEAKER_00:It was too heavy. Yeah. I wanted to tell you that I was sorry about the loss of your abuela and your other family members. Thank you. And, you know, I I felt like I got to know them. And so I I wanted to say that to you. And reading those chapters was really hard, you know, as they had passed away, because it's more than just losing the person, I think. And it's losing their stories, their voice, the way that they told it, and so much history disappears with people when they pass away. But I love that you've become the one who is carrying those stories forward. You know, stories are so important. And I remember the story of little Alien Gonzalez that you wrote about and that five-year-old. I mean, I remember being glued to the television when that was going on and watching the exchange between the United States and Cuba as they tried to make the decision over this little boy and where he was going to live and go back to his father to who really probably didn't even care about him. And uh he had lost his mom, and those other people had drowned as well. I mean, it was such a sad situation. And you talk about the uh exodus of Cuba, the people that are leaving Cuba now, millions of people are leaving. How many have left in just two years? I mean, there's been so many that have left.
SPEAKER_01:In in from 21 to 23, Cuba lost 10% of the population. Oh my. I think it was about uh two, two million, I believe. Well, between one and two million, who knows how many? Most have come to the United States, but they're doing it because the government's making it easier to do. Uh, the government benefits from people leaving and then sending money back and bringing goods back because the system doesn't work. There are no consumer goods, the the economic model just doesn't work. So they're leaving because it's easier to leave. They're leaving because there's no hope. One of the things that happens in Cuba is mothers often tell their children, you need to learn English or French or some other language, because there's no future here. Imagine raising a child knowing that for that child to have a life, that's that's where it's it can't happen there because the system doesn't change, the system doesn't grow. But um, yeah, uh they they what's happening in Cuba today is absolutely heartbreaking. And knowing that they are punished severely for trying to, for even expressing their anger and their why don't we have water? Why don't we have electricity? Why do the military's luxury hotels for foreign tourists have food and water and and um electricity, uh, and not being able to scream about that injustice adds to the day-to-day hardship when you have no voice.
SPEAKER_00:The desperation that I feel from the people in Cuba and when I the rafters, the people that you refer to as the rafters. I mean, the level of desperation that must, and you even had a family member get on, I think it was a boat, but they people would get on boats and rafts that could barely get them very far, and they were hoping to get clear across the ocean with sugar water and hope just you know that they might be able to reach soil, US soil. And that level of desperation is like it's just a whole nother level of fear, I think.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, what would drive you to put your kids on a raft that threw one of the most treacherous stretches of water? Because the whole of Gulf the Gulf of Mexico is rushing through that, those 90 miles. A very treacherous stretch. And uh, I remember criticizing women who were doing that, and my aunt said, Don't don't criticize. You don't you don't know, and you cannot know until you're in their shoes at that moment what what is driving them. You don't know what they're fleeing, you don't know what they've suffered, and and it's so true. I mean, these are the moral dilemmas that change us and that are horrible and force us to make these horrible decisions, and not none of them are easy, and none of the the who knows what the right answers are, but it they happen, and those moments, it's worth going back and thinking about it. You know, I think about would I ever and what my parents did, what my viejos did, would I ever be able to do that? And I don't know that I would at the age of you know 25 with two little kids, going my husband and my mother leaving a my country, knowing I'd never see those people again forever, having nothing, knowing no one, ending up in a iced in, snowed in place without any sense of the language, the culture, and and why would I be able to do that? I don't know. I I think I would have stuck it out longer. And then it would have been too late because that's what happened. People some people never got out. They're Their permiso never came, or they never applied in time to even have a permiso. But what amazing human beings who can do this, these immigrants who can do this, these refugees, what what it takes to succeed, and and the courage and the humanity of that journey is worth thinking about and worth appreciating, regardless of the politics of where you stand on any of it. Think about the humanity and what that is costing them and at least acknowledge it and celebrate. That's what human beings can do. Amazing.
SPEAKER_00:I so want to thank you for telling your story. Thank you for taking their stories and making it yours and then putting it on paper so we can all read it. Because I mean, I really got so much out of it, and I know that everybody else will too. Do you have a website that our listeners can go to?
SPEAKER_01:Yes, anakubana.com. Anna A-N-A Kubana C U B as in boy a n-a dot com. And um you can buy the book there. It's an audio too, by the way. I narrate in the audio book. And people really love the audio book because they really get to hear the voices of I I wasn't sure I'd be able to convey the their voices. Um I'm not a voice actor. It turns out I could do it just fine. Because if you think about it, we've all made fun of our parents all over life, mimicking how they speak. And so I was able to do it pretty easily. And I'll tell you, Ann, I did not want to leave that sound booth. It it's a little space. And their voices were there and they were alive and they were telling, they were telling their stories, and they were they were so powerful. It it felt like they were in there. I didn't want to leave. I did it in Vermont. I didn't want to leave the studio, I didn't want to leave that town, I didn't want to leave that state. Um, but in the audiobook, they're alive.
SPEAKER_00:They are there. Okay, well, now I have to get the audiobook. I already read the book. Now I'm gonna have to be a good idea.
SPEAKER_01:People have said that it's it's a different experience. You're gonna hear different things. Um certain things will s be stressed more in the audiobook. My husband really likes it. Like how it came out. I will absolutely get it. And can I just say no one else who has interviewed me has understood this story as well as you have. I mean, you I I am so grateful to you for appreciating this family and uh their journey, our journey, and especially the human beings at the viejos, because I know that you got what I was what I wanted to share. I think that you got to experience the household, you got to experience those people, and it makes me so happy to know that. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, you're welcome. I mean, some I was grieving with you, I was laughing, you know, knowing that you learned English somewhat from Gilligan's Island. I mean, there was like so much in there. I mean, we have it sounds like we've talked about a lot, but there is so much more in that book, and I really enjoyed every word of it. Well, enjoyed really isn't it? It took me on a journey, like I said earlier, and it gave me a history lesson in a different way. And I think that people really need to read it. Thank you for this opportunity. It's been a total pleasure to speak with you. Please get Anna's book, Property of the Revolution. It is a must-read. Anna's story reminds us that freedom isn't just about borders, it's about people, it's about belonging, it's about finding your voice after generations of silence. Her journey from fear to freedom, from exile to empowerment is a reminder that it is okay to be proud of where you come from and our connections to our past and to our pain does matter. Even after loss, even after displacement, we can still find home wherever we feel safe to plan ourselves. To our listeners, may you keep telling your stories, even the hard ones, because when you do, you don't just heal yourself, you help others find their way home too. Anna showed us that healing isn't about choosing where we live. It is about fully living in your own story. For everyone out there, may you find the courage to speak your story, may you find the strength to hold your roots close and the hope to believe that freedom in every sense of the word begins from within, not control, not power. It's about acceptance and love. I'm Anne from Real Talk with Tina and Anne, and keep finding purpose in the pain and hope in the journey. And we will see you next time.
