A Better Homeland
Learning to Die in Miami: Confessions of a Refugee Boy
by Carlos Eire
Free Press, 2010
(320 pages, $26.00, hardcover)
reviewed by Bernardo Aparicio García
Carlos Eire thinks you should learn to die, and die often. Or maybe I mean Carlos Nieto. Or Chuck Neat-o. Or Carlos M. N. Eire, Ph.D. Or just plain Charlie. If one is to judge by the many names he has lived under, all the identities taken up and cast away, it is really no wonder he thinks so, whatever his name. In his most recent memoir, Learning to Die in Miami: Confessions of a Refugee Boy, Eire shares the story of what happened after his first “death,” when he left behind a privileged childhood in Havana to arrive in Miami as an eleven-year-old boy with nothing but two changes of clothes and a book that “scared [him] half to death,” The Imitation of Christ.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
Bernardo Aparicio García has published short stories and essays in the St. Austin Review and the Catholic literary journal Dappled Things, of which he is founder and publisher. He is also a teacher at the Washington International School in Washington, D.C.
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more from the online archives
24.5—Sept/Oct 2011
A Critical Memoir of Thomas Merton at Gethsemani Abbey by Patrick Henry Reardon
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
