Weg wisp13 14 final pdf

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sUccess stories native Cuba at an early age and live as a political exile, Huergo has had to confront identity issues in her own life. Speaking of her experience in that thorny mediation process, Huergo states that she has had “to learn how to negotiate that hyphenated space between Cuban-American,” adding that she is “not completely one or the other, but both.” She says “it is from that very difficult space that [her] work as a writer is situated.” As an adult in the late 1990s, Huergo returned to Cuba for

the first time since her exile. There, the seed that blossomed into The Death of Fidel Pérez was sown. She says that had she not visited Cuba, The Death of Fidel Pérez “might have been a very different story.” Her return allowed her to experience Havana “not through the stories of others, but directly,” enabling her “to understand the city as a distinct character.” She views the role of a writer as a means to “mediate and reconcile.” Huergo is currently at work on her second novel, Between Ana and Ella, a contemporary,

Workshop & Event Guide Winter 2013-2014

Latina version of Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Set in Washington, D.C., the novel is about two women, one Cuban and the other Mexican, whose lives intersect in response to a United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid that led to the detention of a Guatemalan worker. To read more, visit www. elizabethhuergo.com.

Share your Story! if your path to success began at The Writer’s Center, submit it an idea to our Success Stories Series.

editor@writer.org

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