The Memory of Silence

This novel narrates the lives of two sisters separated by the Cuban Revolution. In 1959, the twins Lauri and Menchu take different and seemingly irreconcilable paths, when Lauri leaves for Miami with her husband and Menchu remains in Havana. During the next forty years, their everyday lives are very different but unknowingly they share the same milestones, attitudes, values and secrets. The Memory of Silence transcends the Cuban reality and becomes a story of universal scope, a triumph of love and family over political and geographical distances. "Its greatest virtue is that it is the first Cuban novel on both sides, that is, not just a novel about the Revolution or just a novel about Exile, but it is the only novel about the Revolution and Exile that I know of."

-Rafael Rojas

Cuban Historian "The Memory of Silence is a powerful depiction of the tragic, forty-year-long separation endured by twin sisters, one in Cuba and one in America. By artfully weaving the women's diaries into a tapestry of everyday life experiences profoundly impacted by the Cuban Revolution, Uva de Aragon bears witness to each sister's heartaches of severance, dislocation, and dispossession. In the face of these hardships De Aragon celebrates the resilience of the human spirit, applauds the redemptive powers of friendship, and asserts the indomitability of familial bonds. The Memory of Silence is a call to keep the hope of reunification and reconciliation alive. It is an aspiration best expressed by Lauri, the twin who escaped to America: "If I had one wish for Cuba ... [it is] that no Cuban would ever live in exile. Never." Ultimately, the power of De Aragon's novel lies in its universal implications: no human being should ever be subjected to the onerous effects of severance and exile."

-Dr. Asher Z. Milbauer, Professor

Director, The Exile Studies Program

Florida International University