Good reading

A week or so ago I added the Spanish-language blog Generación Y to the list at the right. Written in Havana by the thirty-something Yoani Sanchez, its vantage point is that of the generation marked by “schools in the countryside, little Russian dolls, illegal departures, and frustration.”

Its perspective is critical and irreverent. And if you get tired of my focus on Miami and Washington and politics, its frame of reference is refreshing – we Americans are not at the center of Yoani’s world.

In “Vine y me quedé,” she tells what it was like to return to Cuba – to live, not for a visit – after living in Switzerland. Apparently, as she writes, she is not the only one to make this decision, and there’s a procedure for undoing the salida definitiva. In “¿Y mi vaso de leche?” Yoani tells how the reference to providing milk for everyone was removed from the versions of Raul Castro’s July 26 speech that were printed in Cuban newspapers and replayed on television. In “Nuevo símbolo de status” she describes the difference between shopping at the market where private farmers sell their goods (lots of variety, higher prices) and the one where produce from state farms is sold.

Well worth checking out.