Description
Literary Nonfiction. Latino/Latina Studies. Memoir. History and Politics. Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Randall."Gregory Randall has done it: written a captivating, ethically humane, and inspirational memoir of growing up in revolutionary Cuba as a child of exiled political activists. He is able to tell forthright yet loving stories of his engaged life with multiple fathers, escaping the 1968 military crackdown in Mexico as an eight year-old in charge of his younger siblings, forging friendships in Cuban boarding schools, and living his adolescence as an intellectual and political coming-of-age banquet among artists and revolutionaries from across the continent. He sees dogma and cant yet remains deeply committed to the vision of a liberated space and new women and men. Read this powerful book and be stirred anew to live fully in harmony with your values."—Bernardine Dohrn
"TO HAVE BEEN THERE THEN is an extraordinary book. Gregory Randall recreates scenes from a revolutionary childhood and youth in Mexico and Cuba during the 1960s and 70s with brilliant vividness that brings an adult's wisdom to the child's perspective. He evokes the spirit of revolutionary consciousness of the era, when Cuba's radical experimentation and commitment to building a new world intersected with revolutionary dreams and movements throughout Latin America. Randall's childhood was peopled with artists, intellectuals, and revolutionaries from throughout the continent who shared a deep belief in the possibility for radical social change. Cuba's revolutionary history is told here with verve and drama, through personal detail of a child and young man coming of age in truly historic circumstances."—Aviva Chomsky
"Gregory Randall grew up in revolutionary Cuba. He left in 1983, and later he and his wife Laura relocated to Uruguay and Gregory established himself within the academic world there. Revolutionary Cuba's literacy campaign in 1960-61, which sent young people into the mountains during a period that included the Bay of Pigs invasion, is generally recognized. Cuba's far flung medical assistance in situations like the recent Haitian earthquake is also well-known. This book explores the more comprehensive Cuban effort to create what the Zapatistas call un otro mundo, another world. I know of no other book that so richly provides an empathetic view of the twentieth-century socialist project from both within and without."—Staughton Lynd
"Here is the perfect book for this time of change in US-Cuban relations, and when a new generation in the United States has embraced the idea and goals of socialism and human solidarity. Gregory Randall's exquisite coming of age story, set in Cuba during the second decade of the Cuban Revolution, is unflinchingly truthful and compassionate."—Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Author Bio
Gregory Randall was born in New York City in 1960, then lived eight years in Mexico, fourteen in Cuba, eleven in France and since 1994 has resided in Uruguay. He and his wife have three children and one grandchild. He did his undergraduate work in telecommunications in Cuba and earned his doctorate in information technology from the University of Orsay, France. Since 1994 he has been a professor of electrical engineering at the University of the Republic in Montevideo. From 2007 to 2014 he was also that institution's vice president for research, during which time he promoted and oversaw the establishment of several university campuses in the interior of the country. TO HAVE BEEN THERE THEN: MEMORIES OF CUBA 1969-1983 (The Operating System, 2016) is his first book, a memoir of childhood and young adulthood in the Cuba of the 1970s and 80s, with moving, often breathtaking stories of what it was like for a young boy to grow up in revolution.
Author City: MONTEVIDEO URU
Margaret Randall (Translator) is a poet, essayist, oral historian, translator, photographer and social activist. She lived in Latin America for 23 years (Mexico, Cuba, and Nicaragua). From 1962 to 1969, she and Mexican poet Sergio Mondragón founded and co- edited El Corno Emplumado / The Plumed Horn, a bilingual literary quarterly that published some of the best new work of the decade. Randall's recent titles include As If The Empty Chair / Como Si La Silla Vacia, The Rhizome as a Field of Broken Bones, About Little Charlie Lindbergh and She Becomes Time (Wings Press). Che On My Mind and Haydee Santamaria, Cuban Revolutionary: She Led by Transgression appeared in 2015 and 2016 respectively, and a large bilingual anthology of Cuban poetry, Only The Road / Solo El Camino appeared in 2016, all from Duke University Press. Randall lives in New Mexico with her partner (now wife) of 29 years, the painter Barbara Byers, and travels extensively to read, lecture, and teach.
Author City: ALBUQUERQUE, NM USA