Cuba's Island of Dreams: Voices from the Isle of Pines and Youth - Hardcover

The history of a small island just off Cuba's southern coast, from the start of the 20th century - when American settlers and speculators moved to what was then the Isle of Pines - to the start of the 21st century - as the idealistic Cuban youth, after whom it was renamed, start retiring.

In the only English-language book devoted to Cuba's Isle of Youth, Jane McManus writes the history of the small island just off Cuba's southern coast from the turn of the 20th century -- when American settlers and speculators moved to what was then the Isle of Pines -- to the turn of the 21st -- as the idealistic Cuban youth for whom it was renamed are retiring.Employing oral histories to flesh out the economic, political, and cultural facts of this Caribbean frontier, McManus interviewed residents from all periods of the island's immigration and development: American settlement during the first quarter of the century; Japanese, Jamaican, and Cayman Island immigration during the second quarter; and its radical transformation, after 1960, by the presence of thousands of young Cubans from the main island who became its permanent residents and were joined, temporarily, by students from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Her interviews describe life on the island as remembered by both immigrants and natives -- from pirates, soldiers, and planters to housekeepers, fishermen, and students -- and include testimony from the last American on the island.As a resident of Cuba, McManus enjoyed extraordinary access to Cuban archives and to both published and unpublished historical materials. Her documentary sources are augmented by access to government officials as well as family narratives and personal diaries. Drawing upon resources unavailable to most scholars outside Cuba, she has written an evocative history that captures the dreams of this island's history and the identity of its people.