Monkey Hunting

Another book I just finished by the same author as Dreaming in Cuban. Not as good, in my opinion, but still great nonetheless. It really touched my soul that I could relate and also catered to my strange love for Cuba.

It's a fiction novel with fact-based events about the slavery that occurred in Cuba leaving it very much multicultural today. Its about 3 (really 4) generations of a family where the patriarch emigrated to Cuba and had no choice but to stay. The matriarch of the family tree being a Chinese man, Chen Pan, who came to Cuba seeking riches and then return home. He realized his terrible mistake as soon as he was stuffed in the shallow cabin of a ship headed to Cuba. When he got there he was sold into slavery and worked in the sugar cane field which he eventually successfully escaped. He then makes a pretty good life for himself and later purchases a African slave girl whom he later marries.

Anyways, I learned a lot. It was undeniably thought provoking. Beauty definitely came out of all the tragedy but at what cost? A culture was lost but a new one was formed.