A Hard Rain: A Memoir of Cuba in Crisis

In A Hard Rain: A Memoir of Cuba in Crisis, a young American journalist confronts a dying revolution while struggling to reconstruct her identity in a world of tremendous suffering.

Aguilar’s memoir is a raw, searing, and insightful account of Cuba during the Special Period.  It will educate readers about Cuban history, politics and culture and will clarify the preconceptions that Americans of any political persuasion have about the island.  But this memoir extends far beyond 1993 and Havana.  It explores fundamental questions of what it means to be alive at the end of a century of extreme violence and injustice, and facing a future in which the ideologies that propelled the social movements of the twentieth century have been discredited.   

The strength of this work is that the author refrains from offering answers or tidy conclusions.  She presents a tremendous amount of carefully researched information, weaves an engaging narrative, introduces unforgettable characters, and leaves readers to arrive at their own conclusions.

Aguilar is a natural story-teller and a keen observer of people and places.  Her work combines the best of literary fiction, ethnography, and memoir. 

From the prologue:

“This is the story of a special period in Cuba’s history as well as in my own.  This is a chronicle of loss and hope; it is a tribute to those who attempted to make Cuba a model for the world to emulate; and it is a Kaddish for what could have been—in Cuba and in many places.  This is a political coming-of-age story, and, above all else, this is a love story.”      

To read another excerpt from the prologue, click here:  Prologue