Reading Mr. Iyer’s words was more than reading a book. It was a journey. A journey to Cuba. A journey to myself. My parents were Cuban. My grandparents too. But I was raised American. My name is LeRoy. The only Spanish I heard growing up was when my parents whispered secrets they didn’t want us to understand, or when we visited my grandparents. A little stuck with me. Enough.

It was a Tuesday when I picked my mother up from the airport. She lived in Atlanta, but now, suddenly, she was in Miami.

When I read Pico Iyer’s Cuba and The Night in the spring of ’96, I didn’t know it would turn my world inside out. But books do that sometimes. They pull you in, twist you around, and leave you standing somewhere else entirely.