To Change the World

Margaret Randall is an award-winning feminist poet, photographer, and social activist with more than eighty published books to her credit, such as Stones Witness and When I Look into the Mirror and See You (Rutgers University Press). She and her family lived in Cuba from 1969 to 1980. Randall's previous works on Cuba include Cuban Women Now, Cuban Women Twenty Years Later, and Breaking the Silences: 20th Century Poetry by Cuban Women.

A moving and intimate contemplation of a key historical moment that has been relegated to the margins of political discussion in the wake of the cold war. - Mark Behr (author of The Smell of Apples) To know Cuba, neither analyses nor statistics nor official declarations nor diatribes by its adversaries are enough. One needs eyes infused with heart, passionate eyes, with which to look at the Cuban people in their daily life. In this book Margaret Randall looks at Cuba through such eyes. - Maria Lopez Vigil (author of Cuba: Neither Heaven Nor Hell) "Many ask if those of us who lived the Cuban revolution in flesh and spirit would wage that battle again. Margaret Randall's loving and realistic book reveals why we would. It gives us the highlights and shadows of a process that marked the 20th century like no other."THERE SHOULD BE ACUTE ACCENTs OVER THE i IN RODRIGUEZ AND OVER THE o IN CALDERON. - Mirta Rodriguez Calderon (Cuban revolutionary, journalist, and feminist) Randall's fondness and indeed admiration for Cuba are unmistakable, especially when she's talking about the nation's systems of health care and education, a premise that will both provoke and anger some readers. Yet Randall's personal reflection on a decade in Cuba is a worthy addition to the ever growing body of literature on Cuba--past and present. - Boyd Childress (Library Journal) It is Randall's ability to make the reader a part of her daily encounters that makes her memoir so engaging. Her writing humanizes a revolution all too often stereotyped by the U.S. mainstream press. The contradictions of the Cuban revolution are illustrated movingly by incidents in a mother's daily life. To Change the World not only covers the years Randall spent in Cuba and the months leading up to them, it lays the groundwork for a considered examination of the Cuban situation today, ending the last chapter with an expansive global political and societal analysis. Randall's personal story would have been a page turner in itself, but her choice to bear witness to the larger struggle of the Cuban people at a time in history when many places in the world were engaged in the struggle for social justice makes for a riveting account that will undoubtedly stand the test of time. (National Catholic Reporter) To Change the World is a rare double opportunity: an intimate look at the Cuban Revolution from 1969 to 1980, and a fascinating portrait of the development of a historian, poet, and political thinker. (Monthly Review) To Change the World is a gripping, affective narrative by one of the most extraordinary feminists of our times--and a cautionary look at how and why the reach of revolution can fall far short of its grasp. (Women's Review of Books) Randall's prose is beautiful and she walks the reader through the beginning of the Cuban Revolution in a way no other sort of text or author could do. (A Contra Corriente)

• Scarsdale to HavanaTransitionSettling inFood, food, foodTen million tons of sugar and eleven fishermenA poetry contest and a beauty pageantWomen and differenceInformation and consciousnessChanging hearts, minds, and law"Poetry, like bread, is for everyone"El quinquenio grisThe SandinistasA question of powerEpilogue