Ivonne Lamazares w/ The Tilting House in Convo w/ Virgilio Suarez

Two estranged sisters with a complicated past and an acrimonious present reunite in 1990s Cuba to confront the riddle of family amid the scars of political upheaval. Please join us for an evening with Ivonne Lamazares as she discusses her book The Tilting House.
"A jewel of a book. As vibrant as the brightly-painted houses in Havana at its heart The Tilting House immerses us in a sweeping narrative of generational trauma and beauty yet draws us close with prose that sparkles and characters that won't let go." —Jessica Elisheva Emerson author of Olive Days

About the Book
In the summer of 1993 Yuri a teenage orphan is living with her strict religious aunt Ruth in a Havana suburb when Mariela a thirty-four-year-old artist arrives from the United States with a shocking revelation. She claims to be Yuri's sister insisting that she and Yuri share a mother and that Ruth essentially kidnapped her when she sent her into exile against her will through Operation Pedro Pan. Forced to grow up in orphanages Mariela spent the past three decades in the United States and has returned to Cuba to reclaim her roots make art and perhaps seek vengeance on Ruth. Yuri is both fascinated and repulsed by the young glamorous and aggrieved Mariela. When Ruth is jailed for unknown charges Yuri falls further into Mariela’s mercurial orbit.

Spanning two countries and three decades The Tilting House explores identity and family loyalty the effects of losing one’s mother and motherland the scars of political and historical upheaval and an immigrant’s complex quest both to return “home” and to be free from the past. Through her long journey Yuri comes to understand that the past cannot be fully recovered or fully escaped even as she approaches the possibility of compassion for Mariela for Ruth for others and for herself.

About the Author
Ivonne Lamazares was born in Havana. She left Cuba at the age of thirteen and settled in Florida. Her first novel The Sugar Island was translated into seven languages. Her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Latina magazine The Southern Review Michigan Quarterly Review The Florida Review and elsewhere. Lamazares is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and three Florida Individual Artist Fellowships. She lives in Miami and teaches writing at Miami Dade College.