Waking in Havana

A Memoir of AIDS and Healing in Cuba

Elena Schwolsky (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

248 Seiten

2019
She Writes Press (Verlag)
978-1-63152-654-1 (ISBN)

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Grieving the loss of her husband to AIDS, a young widow and burned-out nurse steps away from the frontlines of the epidemic and returns to Cuba, the revolutionary island that transformed her life twenty years earlier—and, as she navigates the hardships and humor of life on this forbidden island, finds the strength to heal.

In 1972, when she was a young, divorced, single mother, restless and idealistic, Elena Schwolsky made a decision that changed her life: leaving her eighteen-month-old son with his father, she joined hundreds of other young Americans on a work brigade in Cuba. They spent their days building cinderblock houses for workers and their nights partying and debating politics. The Cuban revolution was young, and so were they. At a moment of transition in Schwolsky’s life, Cuba represented hope and the power to change.

Twenty years later, she is drawn back to this forbidden island, yearning to move out of grief following the death of her husband from AIDS and feeling burned out after spending ten years as a nurse on the frontlines of the epidemic. Back in Cuba, she experiences the chaotic bustle of a Havana most Americans never see—a city frozen in time yet constantly changing. She takes readers along with her through her humorous attempts to communicate in a new language and navigate this very different culture—through the leafy tranquility of the controversial AIDS Sanitorium and into the lives of the resilient, opinionated, and passionate Cubans who become her family and help her to heal.

Elena Schwolsky, RN, MPH is a nurse, community health educator, activist, and writer who spent a decade as a pediatric nurse at the height of the AIDS epidemic. She has trained AIDS educators in Cuba and Tanzania, and currently teaches community health workers in diverse urban neighborhoods in New York City. Her essays have appeared in The American Journal of Nursing and The Veteran, and her work has been included in the anthologies Storied Dishes: What Our Family Recipes Tell Us About Who We Are and Where We’ve Been and Reflections on Nursing: 80 inspiring stories on the art and science of nursing. A chapter she cowrote appears in the textbook Children, Families and AIDS: Psychosocial and Therapeutic Issues. Schwolsky is the recipient of an award from the Barbara Deming Money for Women Fund and is proud to be recognized as the madrina (godmother) of Proyecto Memorias, the Cuban AIDS Quilt project.

Erscheinungsdatum	04.02.2019
Zusatzinfo	Illustrations, unspecified
Sprache	englisch
Maße	139 x 215 mm
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie ► Psychologie
	Reisen ► Reiseberichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Trennung / Trauer
ISBN-10	1-63152-654-5 / 1631526545
ISBN-13	978-1-63152-654-1 / 9781631526541
Zustand	Neuware