"A professor at the University of Michigan, Behar seeks a better understanding of her roots and of the Jewish experience in her native Cuba. Traversing the island, Behar becomes a confidante to myriad Jewish strangers. Through one-on-one interviews and black-and-white images taken by her photographer, Humberto Mayol, she uncovers the diasporic thread that connects Cuban Jews. Familial stories of wandering beginning in the 1920s tell of displaced Polish and German Jews—escapees from anti-Semitism and Auschwitz—opening mom-and-pop shops in La Habana Vieja, becoming peddlers, replacing Yiddish with Spanish and settling into Latino life only to be uprooted within decades. An estimated 16,500 Jews lived in Cuba in the late 1950s, when a mass exodus to Miami and New York took place—a reaction to Castro's budding communist revolution. This diligent recounting and pictorial collage of interviews with adolescents, the aging, the impoverished and the political by Behar preserves in memory the people and places that make up Cuba's Jewish story." -Publishers Weekly, 9/24/07

"This may be Behar's most personal work . . . she lovingly intertwines her own thoughts and feelings with the more analytical observations of her profession. The result: a narrative that tugs at the heart." -Miami Herald

Reviews of An Island Called Home:

4/1/08  Sergio Carmona, "Jews of Cuba," University of Miami's Sun-Sentinel, Tuesday, April 1, 2008.

2/22/08 Interview with Maria Hinojosa on Latino USA.

2/11/08 Interview with Daybreak on Plum TV.

1/6/08  Fabiola Santiago, "Photographing fusion: 'Lox with Black Beans' exhibit shows subtle differences in lives of Cuban Jews." Miami Herald, Tropical Life, Sunday, January 6, 2008. In PDF.

1/4/08  Carol Cook, "Treasured Island," Haaretz, January 4, 2008. In PDF: part 1, part 2, part 3.

12/20/07  Jorge Ferrer, "Los últimos judíos: Returning to Jewish Cuba," cuba encuentro.comunidad. In PDF.

11/30/07  Kimberly Marlow Hartnett, "Going Home to What Remains of a Jewish Cuba," Seattle Times. In PDF.

11/26/07   "Back to Cuba," Interview with Alicia Zuckerman, Nextbook. In MP3.

11/25/07  Jorge A. Bañales, "Una isla llamada hogar," El Diaro, La Prensa. In PDF.

11/16/07  Molly A. Strauss, "Cuban and Jewish Groups Hold 'Juban Celebration,'" The Harvard Crimson.

11/15/07  Carol Katzman, “Saying Kaddish for a Jew’s Last Home,” Jewish Federation of Omaha Press.

11/11/07  Jenn McKee, “Anthropologist profiles Cuba’s Jews,” Ann Arbor News.

11/5/07  Eric Herschtal, “Havana Hebrew,” New York Jewish
Week. In PDF

11/3/07  Ana Veciana-Suarez, “Author’s heritage draws her back to Cuba’s Jews,” Miami Herald, Tropical Life.

"Whether you are a comadre or a stranger, a storyteller or story-listener, this book reaches across kitchen tables, across cultures, and takes you into its confidence." -Sandra Cisneros, author of Woman Hollering Creek"

"A finely crafted readable cross-cultural encounter between dos comadres: feminist anthropologist and informant, cubanita de este lado and mexicana across the border.... Escribiendo cultura con corazón, compasión y pasión, Behar moves the serpent to speak, and move us to read and read again." -Gloria Anzaldúa, author of Borderlands/La Frontera

"A brave and unusual work.... A fascinating portrait of two very different women and their intertwined struggle for identity." -Boston Globe"

"A stunning critique and reversal of the received image of the passive and humble Mexican Indian woman.... Engrossing reading at the hands of skillful interpreter." -New York Times Book Review

"A demanding and intensely satisfying read." -Hispanic Magazine

Reviews of Translated Woman:

5/6/92, Chronicle of Higher Education (by Scott Heller, mention)

1/15/93, Booklist

1/18/93, Publishers Weekly

2/1/93, Library Journal

2/5/93, Boston Globe

January-February, 93, Hispanic Magazine

January-February, 93, Ms (box)

2/25/93, Boston Phoenix (by Alan West)

3/93, Boston Phoenix

3/7/93, Oakland Tribune

5/93, Women's Review of Books (by Louise Lamphere)

5/5/93, Chronicle of Higher Education (article and interview, "Esperanza's Story and Ruth's," by Liz McMillen)

5/93, Choice (by Oriol Pi-Sunyer)

7/10/93 NRC Handelsblad (Netherlands, Nijmegen)

7-8/93, NACLA, Report on the Americas

8/4/93, New York Newsday (interview)

Summer 93, Belles Lettres

8/93, Books of the South-West

9/93, Sojourner

10/1/93, Sunflower (Wichita State University, interview)

10/2/93, Wichita Eagle (interview)

9/5/93, New York Times Book Review (by Nancy Scheper-Hughes)

9/20/93, The Nation (by Victor Perera)

12/30/93, International Herald Tribune (by Ariel Dorfman)

12/5/93, New York Times (Notable Books of 1993)

4/24/94, New York Times (New and Notable Paperbacks)

1993-1994, Quality Paperback Book Club (book adoption)

September-October, 1993, Michigan Alumnus

4/24/94, Wellesley News

Spring, 94, Latino Stuff Review (by Lourdes Gil)

January-February, 94, Tikkun (by Ilan Stavans)

9/94, Journal of American History (by Emma Pérez)

June, 95, American Anthropologist ("Ruth Behar's Biography in the Shadow: A Review of Reviews" by Gelya Frank)

November, 95, American Ethnologist (by Judith Friedlander)

12/29/96, Los Angeles Times Book Review, "Best Books of 1996," in Biography (by Cristina Garcia)

Review essays that include and highlight Translated Woman:

"Reframing the Narrative Voice in Educational Research," by William G. Tierney, Review of Education/Pedagogy/Cultural Studies 16 (1), 1994: 87-92.

"Late-Modern Anxieties about Modes of Knowing: Gender Themes," by Maila K. Stivens, Current Anthropology 36 (4), Aug.-Oct., 1995: 706-709.

"Narrative and Psychological Understanding," by Ruthellen Josselson, Psychiatry 58, November 1995: 330-328.

"Personal Testimony: Latin American Women Telling Their Lives," by Kathleen Logan, Latin American Research Review 32 (1), 1997: 199-211 (extensive discussion of Translated Woman).

"A story that engages the emotions. Making the past visible, she preserves it against oblivion." -The Washington Post Book World"As 'a woman of the border'.... [Behar] infuses her vision with insight, candor and compassion." - The New York Times Book Review"Behar has convinced me that ethnographic empathy will produce an anthropology that has greater meaning than the distanced and detached academic anthropology of the past." -The Boston Globe"Behar's collection of essays assesses the impact of emotion and experience on the process of research and writing, and on the relationship between the observer and the observed.... Intensely moving." -Choice

"[Her] insistent looking back is what makes Ruth Behar's vision of anthropology so compelling. Memories do not vanish; they recede and leave traces. The anthropologist who makes herself vulnerable to these indications makes the world a more intelligible and hopeful place." -The Jerusalem Report

Reviews of The Vulnerable Observer:

9/11/96, Publishers Weekly

11/21/96, "Observer author knows of Cuba, diaspora," Miami Herald, by Elinor J. Brecher

1/1/97, Booklist

1/5/97, Boston Sunday Globe

1/6/97, Choice

1/97, Library Journal

1/27/97, "Anthropologist writes from the heart," by Anne Valentine Martino, Ann Arbor News, Connection, B1-B2

1/28/97, University Record, University of Michigan

1/31/97, Chronicle of Higher Education, Nota Bene: A16

2/24/97, "Anthropologist finds own soul," by Karl Leif Bates, Detroit News, Discovery, E1

3/21/97, "U-Michigan's Award-winning Scholar Publishes New Book, Hispanic Outlook

3/23/97, New York Times Book Review, by Diane Cole

4/8/97, "U-M scientist adds a personal touch to her work," Lansing State Journal, Today, 1D-3D, by Shelia Schimpf

4/11/97, "Ruth Behar on Exploring Identity," Baltimore Jewish Times, vol. 234, no. 6.

5/1/97, "Letting It Get To You: Cuban-born anthropologist Ruth Behar lives and works in a diaspora within a diaspora," by Judith Bolton-Fasman, Jerusalem Report, 48-49.

December, 1997, American Anthropologist, by Edith Turner.

May, 1998, Women's Review of Books, by Linda Niemann

November, 1998, Contemporary Sociology, by Marjorie DeVault

"Bridges to Cuba is a collection of self-reflexive social science, poetry, prose, drama, and essays by 57 writers and scholars, as well as drawings, paintings, and performance art by 20 visual artists. All these contributors are members of the Cuban "communidad." The circumstances of why these contributors live either on one side of the bridge or the other is the core of the volume. But the response to and questioning of the maintenance of that bridge is the underlying current of the work. As Cubans born just before the revolution, these writers, scholars, and artists have all had their lives shaped by their personal locations pertaining to that military triumph that became a battlefield of ideological, economic, and familial warfare. The writers, scholars, and artists who came of age during the construction of the bridge shored by the U.S. embargo hope that this volume will be a way of helping festering wounds to heal. This triage operation demands and tests all human capabilities and requires exceptional skill, as witnessed by Ruth Behar's extraordinary editorial crafting of this collection, and her personal dedication toward this goal of Cuban community bridging. Nothing in this life is easy." -A. Lynn Bolles for www.anthrosource.net

Reviews of Bridges to Cuba :

“Trying to Address the Cuban Paradox” by John M. Kirk and Peter McKenna (book review), in Latin American Research Review, Vol. 34, No. 2 (1999), pp. 214-226.

5/4/94, Miami Herald (article, "In Bridges, Author Finds Understanding," by Liz Balmaseda