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Summary
Summary
An astonishing account of Cuban exiles, CIA informants, and cocaine traffickers in Florida by the New York Times -bestselling author of South and West .
In Miami , the National Book Award-winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking looks beyond postcard images of fluorescent waters, backlit islands, and pastel architecture to explore the murkier waters of a city on the edge.
From Fidel Castro and the Bay of Pigs invasion to Lee Harvey Oswald and the Kennedy assassination to Oliver North and the Iran-Contra affair, Joan Didion uncovers political intrigues and shadowy underworld connections, and documents the US government's "seduction and betrayal" of the Cuban exile community in Dade County. She writes of hotels that offer "guerrilla discounts," gun shops that advertise Father's Day deals, and a real-estate market where "Unusual Security and Ready Access to the Ocean" are perks for wealthy homeowners looking to make a quick escape. With a booming drug trade, staggering racial and class inequities, and skyrocketing murder rates, Miami in the 1980s felt more like a Third World capital than a modern American city. Didion describes the violence, passion, and paranoia of these troubled times in arresting detail and "beautifully evocative prose" ( The New York Times Book Review ).
A vital report on an immigrant community traumatized by broken dreams and the cynicism of US foreign policy, Miami is a masterwork of literary journalism whose insights are timelier and more important than ever.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
PW reported that Didion's style, ``while it suffers overload, will delight her readers as she swims in the mainstream of the growing run of `Miami' books.'' She portrays today's Miami as a hotbed of conspiracy and endless meetings among wealthy Cuban-Americans plotting Castro's overthrow. (September) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Not unexpectedly, and with customary flair, Didion ignores the traditional features of Miami, looks briefly at tense race relations, white flight, and a saturated real-estate market, and concentrates on a kind of second city, the community of Cuban exiles who have prospered even as they pursue la lucha, the straggle. This is, of course, the kind of scene she favors: political intrigue and moral issues dominate conversations, and young girls celebrate their birthdays dressed in tiaras and fur-trimmed capes. Although her focus is idiosyncratically selective and at times her flinty, mannered style nearly parodies itself (""Hot dogs were passed, and Coca-cola spilled""), overall she is in control of this consistently engrossing material. In the 60's, Cuban refugees took the unskilled jobs that might have been offered to blacks. Many also worked (without formal government acknowledgement) for the CIA, fueled by a series of apparently intentional deceptions about policy. Exile was--is--""the organizing principle"" of their lives, and the men of the 2506 Brigade (the unsupported invasion force) remain grand heroes. ""I would say that John F. Kennedy is still the number two most hated man in Miami,"" a failed mayoral candidate volunteers, and Didion emphasizes reports linking exiles to the assassination (and reminds of Cuban involvement in Watergate and the Iran/contra tangles). Nowadays many of these men are wealthy and powerful, highly visible within the exile community, often unknown to non-Cuban citizens. Much of this information comes from conventional sources: the Herald, passionate loyalists, a university study. But this Miami is no ""rich and wicked pastel boomtown,"" as the semi-official image would have it. Didion presents a more complex and genuinely dramatic situation, inflecting her work with astute observations about the city's unique political circumstances and lingering on the kinds of details that have colored her other writings: a hotel offering ""guerrilla discounts,"" a gun shop advertising Father's Day specials, house blessed with ""Unusual Security and Ready Access to the Ocean."" Another presistently stylish report that, with its JFK references and drug-runner allusions, has even more outreach than usual. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Choice Review
Didion is a master essayist. She focuses on her subjects with the sharpness of a photographer. In Miami, her subject is the South Florida Cuban community, a wealthy, influential majority that recently elected its first mayor. Didion probes the exile's fanatical commitment to the overthrow of Fidel Castro, and the lengths to which it will go to achieve its goal. She points up the unhappy connection of this community with Washington that began with the Bay of Pigs, and its continued involvement with the Nicaraguan Contras. Didion describes Miami as a Third World city, closer to Bogota and Caracas than to Boston or Los Angeles. Yet there is another Miami, a southern city with racial attitudes and troubles familiar to the South, not unaware but rather unconcerned about the 56% Spanish-speaking majority. Miami raises unsettling questions that range from the exile's capability, resources, and motivation to assassinate a president to participation in illegal activities in Central America; to raise private armies, sometimes under directives from Washington and sometimes not, but always under the banner, ``Nicaragua Hoy, Cuba Ma~nana.'' All libraries.-J. Raftery, California State University, Chico
Library Journal Review
Though Didion dissects Floridas hot spot, the objective here, however, is not so much of a profile of the city as a political analysis of the Miami Cuban mind, observed LJs reviewer. By combining her novelists ear and journalists eye, Didion gives the reader a sense of the never-ending feeling of exile that is locked in the heart of every refugee. This remains a masterful polemic. (LJ 10/15/87) (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
