I was a student both of Professor Juan Roura-Parella and his wife, the lovely Teresa. Professor Roura taught me about aesthetics and philosophy, Goya’s black paintings, the poetry of Antonio Machado, and what it means to be a political exile. The lovely Teresa taught me classical Spanish guitar, to move gracefully, and how to look elegant in high heels.
I was born in Cuba and grew up speaking Spanish with my family in New York. When I went to Wesleyan University in 1974, I was not yet eighteen. I’d never gone to camp or lived on my own. My mother was in tears. But my father was irate that I was going to college against his will; he believed a girl should wait at home until a man came to marry her. After a tense, scary, and silent three-hour drive from our rental apartment in Queens to the leafy campus in Middletown, Connecticut, I couldn’t wait for Mami and Papi and my younger brother, Mori, to drop me off at the dorm. I was eager to start living an independent life in the grand feminist style I’d been hearing about in the news, maybe not burn my bra, but stand tall, brave, and sure of myself, and never have to depend on a man to take care of me. Read more
Poetry & Friendship
/in Uncategorized/by Ruth BeharI think many of us dream of writing poetry when we are young. We try our hand at it a couple of times, amass pages in a notebook, and eventually find the courage to print out a few fledgling poems. Our heads bowed, we dare to show those poems to someone we admire, a teacher or a published writer. And when that person says our poems are awful, it’s a shot in the heart. Those who are strong will ignore the wound and keep on writing. Those plagued with self-doubt will stop writing and tell themselves they are unworthy of being called a poet.
When told my poems weren’t good enough, I gave up. Years later, when I took up poetry again, I wrote an autobiographical poem about being an “Obedient Student.” I hope it will serve as a mantra to others not to follow in my path. Read more
Brutus, July, 1998- April, 2015
/in Uncategorized/by Ruth BeharGabriel asked for a dog several times when he was a little boy. But we didn’t want to get a dog. “Too much trouble,” we said. “Who needs a dog? Neither of us had a dog when we were growing up and we turned out fine.” Gabriel had to be content with a stuffed animal, a red bulldog that he called Brutus, which he won at a fair in Michigan.
But after Gabriel tore his ACL at the age of eleven in a senseless accident and couldn’t play sports anymore, David and I decided we should get a dog.
Gabriel wanted a bulldog. But I had learned that pugs were very cute while visiting my friend Rosa in Los Angeles. Rosa had two pugs, an old pug and a young pug. I convinced Gabriel that pugs had the most adorable squished faces of any dog in the world. Read more
Wanderer, There is No Road: Remembering Juan Roura-Parella and the Lovely Teresa
/in Uncategorized/by Ruth BeharI was a student both of Professor Juan Roura-Parella and his wife, the lovely Teresa. Professor Roura taught me about aesthetics and philosophy, Goya’s black paintings, the poetry of Antonio Machado, and what it means to be a political exile. The lovely Teresa taught me classical Spanish guitar, to move gracefully, and how to look elegant in high heels.
I was born in Cuba and grew up speaking Spanish with my family in New York. When I went to Wesleyan University in 1974, I was not yet eighteen. I’d never gone to camp or lived on my own. My mother was in tears. But my father was irate that I was going to college against his will; he believed a girl should wait at home until a man came to marry her. After a tense, scary, and silent three-hour drive from our rental apartment in Queens to the leafy campus in Middletown, Connecticut, I couldn’t wait for Mami and Papi and my younger brother, Mori, to drop me off at the dorm. I was eager to start living an independent life in the grand feminist style I’d been hearing about in the news, maybe not burn my bra, but stand tall, brave, and sure of myself, and never have to depend on a man to take care of me. Read more
Searching for Home
/in Uncategorized/by Ruth BeharThere was a time – I was still young, in my mid-20s – when I thought I was going to be a perennial traveller, a woman without a country or permanent address, a vagabond. Not that I was ever the backpacker type. I liked lace blouses and high heels too much. In my fantasy image of myself, I floated from place to place in long flowing gowns. In real life, I travelled heavy, lugging way too many suitcases wherever I went. Read full article…
The Bridge from Cuba
/in Uncategorized/by Ruth BeharThe night of February 20, 2014 an overflow crowd of passionate Cuban-American fans awaited the island writer, Leonardo Padura, at the Coral Gables Congregational Church. Books & Books, the organizer of the event, together with the Cuban Research Institute of Florida International University, had wisely foreseen the need to move the reading to the larger location down the street from the landmark Miami bookstore.
Leonardo Padura has achieved an international following for his Mario Conde detective series. More recently, his long and probing historical novels have won him a new literary fame in the United States, including a recent write up in The New Yorker. An American edition of his work, The Man Who Loved Dogs, ostensibly about Leon Trotsky and his assassin Ramón Mercader, but ultimately a profound meditation on utopian ideals, was just released by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Read more