Finding Mañana

Finding Mañana: A Memoir of Cuban Exodus (2005) is an account of journalist Mirta Ojito’s emigration from Cuba during the Mariel boatlift in 1980. Ojito, a Miami newspaper columnist, contextualizes her own family’s journey against the socio-political upheaval of both Cuba and South Florida during the 1970s and 1980s. Finding Mañana details the political repression and suppression of dissident voices that characterized the Castro regime; explores the vast, unbroken network of Cuban and Cuban American families that endured decades of exile and diaspora; and delves deeply into the way that exile shaped both individual and cultural identity for Cuban émigrés in Miami. Ojito’s memoir is important as an account of the Mariel boatlift written by an individual who was both part of the emigration and is a trained journalist with expertise in the social, political, and economic world of Cuba and the Cuban diaspora.

This study guide refers to the 2005 hardcover edition of the text by Penguin Press.

Summary

The memoir begins with an account of everyday life in Fidel Castro’s Cuba in the 1970s. Ojito details the climate of political repression and the state surveillance network that watched each citizen’s every move.