"These stories have an appealing colloquial voice, peppered with Spanglish. Milanés's depictions of Cuban-American culture are vibrant."— New York Times Book Review
"In these stories, Cuban exiles and their descendants struggle with questions of alienation, love and loyalty to family and their culture. What makes Cecilia Rodríguez Milanés a writer to be reckoned with is that she tells Lala and Ofelia and Roxana and the other characters' stories, but in so doing manages to tell all of our stories."— Ann Hood
"With Oye What I’m Gonna Tell You, spellbinding storyteller Cecilia Rodríguez Milanés delivers on that you-must-listen-up promise of her title, gifting readers with a pitch-perfect array of characters and voices that captivate, enthrall, and illuminate. The world spins on, yet in varying ways Cuba has left a mark on each of these individuals—the island a sun around which they will forever orbit to some degree—and to read these unflinching stories is to feel the poignant truth of actual lives and actual struggles. A collection that is as important as it is engrossing.”— Skip Horack, author of The Other Joseph, The Eden Hunter, and The Southern Cross
"Oye What I'm Gonna Tell You gives us an urgent glimpse into the lives of people yearning to fully understand their place in the world. Through these myriad voices, Milanés evokes a sense of the vital oral traditions that have shaped our community. These stories enrich and complicate an important, relevant conversation about what it means to exist on the hyphen — be it that of Cuban-American or any other truly American experience."— Jennine Capó Crucet, author of How to Leave Hialeah and Make Your Home Among Strangers
"To be of color in America is to know difference in a profound way. In Oye, What I’m Gonna Tell You, Cecilia Rodríguez Milanés writes a risky, remarkable, and necessary story collection. Milanés creates extraordinary characters each of whom is striking out for territory unknown, both geographically and personally. There is a resilience of spirit in her Cuban-American characters, who make a home that is a hybrid of two worlds. Fresh and evocative, this is the story collection you’ll want to read this year."— Nina McConigley, author of Cowboys and East Indians, winner of the 2014 PEN Open Book Award
"These stories have an appealing colloquial voice, peppered with Spanglish. Milanés's depictions of Cuban-American culture are vibrant."— New York Times Book Review
"In these stories, Cuban exiles and their descendants struggle with questions of alienation, love and loyalty to family and their culture. What makes Cecilia Rodríguez Milanés a writer to be reckoned with is that she tells Lala and Ofelia and Roxana and the other characters' stories, but in so doing manages to tell all of our stories."— Ann Hood
"With Oye What I’m Gonna Tell You, spellbinding storyteller Cecilia Rodríguez Milanés delivers on that you-must-listen-up promise of her title, gifting readers with a pitch-perfect array of characters and voices that captivate, enthrall, and illuminate. The world spins on, yet in varying ways Cuba has left a mark on each of these individuals—the island a sun around which they will forever orbit to some degree—and to read these unflinching stories is to feel the poignant truth of actual lives and actual struggles. A collection that is as important as it is engrossing.”— Skip Horack, author of The Other Joseph, The Eden Hunter, and The Southern Cross
"Oye What I'm Gonna Tell You gives us an urgent glimpse into the lives of people yearning to fully understand their place in the world. Through these myriad voices, Milanés evokes a sense of the vital oral traditions that have shaped our community. These stories enrich and complicate an important, relevant conversation about what it means to exist on the hyphen — be it that of Cuban-American or any other truly American experience."— Jennine Capó Crucet, author of How to Leave Hialeah and Make Your Home Among Strangers
"To be of color in America is to know difference in a profound way. In Oye, What I’m Gonna Tell You, Cecilia Rodríguez Milanés writes a risky, remarkable, and necessary story collection. Milanés creates extraordinary characters each of whom is striking out for territory unknown, both geographically and personally. There is a resilience of spirit in her Cuban-American characters, who make a home that is a hybrid of two worlds. Fresh and evocative, this is the story collection you’ll want to read this year."— Nina McConigley, author of Cowboys and East Indians, winner of the 2014 PEN Open Book Award
2015-01-29
Cuban-Americans grapple with the beauty, boundaries and nuances of their cultural heritage in this irregular, multifaceted new collection from Rodríguez Milanés (Literature and Writing/Univ. of Central Florida; Marielitos, Balseros and Other Exiles, 2009, etc.).These characters' lives all intersect with Cuba—whether they have immigrated to it, been exiled from it, never known it, or lived and died within its shores. And, given current events, there may be no better time in recent memory for this chorus of voices to resound. Here, tradition collides with modern ideals on and off the island, and all of them implore all of the others to listen to what they have to say. In the opening story, "Niñas de Casa," girls are undone by the men around them, and one young woman develops a ferocious resolution to do right by their memories. (The theme of men and women being haunted by machismo's innocuous and terrifying iterations appears throughout.) An aging mother laments her grown children's choices and longs to give homes—and second chances—to kids who have been stranded at the U.S.-Mexico border ("Poor and Unhappy"). A gay man tries to explain to his sister that his niece's boyfriend might be gay as well ("Who Knows Best"). A teenager leaves Florida to visit her summer fling in the frozen New Jersey winter ("Big Difference"). A tough-talking girl invites her Haitian boyfriend to Thanksgiving dinner with her family, with heartbreaking results ("The Law of Progress"). The characters are in turn trapped beneath the details of their identities—Cuban, American, male, female, straight, queer, old-fashioned, forward-thinking, religious or not—and uplifted by them. The stories that don't work fall flat and seem uncertain of their own purpose. The stories that do work, however, are high-wire balancing acts, a blend of sorrow, wit and loveliness, and the kind of real that catches in a reader's throat. Uneven at times, but when it sparks, it catches fire.
