The Portable Island explores the sensibilities of exile with grace to spare, giving voice to the ambivalence with which all of us -whether exiled or not - yearn for what we've lost. The island evoked here is a place both real and mythical: as much a paradise as a hell, as much a point of origin as a destination. Beyond that, these essays and poems also bear eloquent witness to the utter failure of Cuba's so-called Revolution, which wantonly expels whomever it can't devour. - Carlos Eire, author of Waiting for Snow in Havana
Ruth Behar and Lucia Suarez serve up a sumptuous feast of love for a lost island. The Portable Island demonstrates the indelible impact Cuba has had not just upon its children but on all who come to know it. - Alfredo Estrada, author of Havana: Autobiography of a City
Ruth Behar and Lucia M. Suarez, in gathering these inspiring, tenacious meditations on the circuitousness of exile, show that the terms 'home' and 'diaspora' are now synonymous. They also prove that Cuba is not only an island. It has become a metaphor for universalism! - Ilan Stavans, author of The Hispanic Condition and Spanglish
