A Story of Love With a Strong Cuban Flavor

Born in Cuba, transplanted to New York and now living in Santa Barbara, journalist-author-poet-playwright Himilce Novas describes herself as a cultural anthropologist.

Her goal for 20 years, as writer and teacher, has been to shake the stereotypes out of Latino culture. Among her books are the popular Q&A; “Everything You Need to Know About Latino History” (Plume, 1994); a cookbook, “Latin American Cooking Across the U.S.A.” (Knopf, 1996), which offers a history of each dish along with its recipe; and “The Hispanic 100” (Citadel Press, 1995), a compilation of biographies of Latinos who have influenced U.S. history.

Now Novas has turned to fiction. “Mangos, Bananas and Coconuts: A Cuban Love Story” (Arte Publico Press, University of Houston, 1996) combines mysticism with sharp social satire in its Caribbean retelling of the Tristan and Isolde myth. The debut novel has been praised for its rich lyricism and fierce wit.

When a peasant worker on a Cuban plantation becomes embroiled in religious fundamentalism and the Castro revolution, fleeing the country with his infant daughter, he does not know a twin brother has been left behind. Novas tells it this way:

“This is a story about a woman named Esmeralda Saavedra, a Cuban, according to her father, a Hispanic according to the Census, and a New Yorker, as she first called herself before she found a need to cling to her identity by its roots and follicles, and thus call herself Cuban again, who at 29 sealed her fate by falling in love, and then having fallen in love, committed a foolish act to rectify her mistake.

“And it is equally the story of Juan--or Don Juan, as his schoolmates at Yale dubbed him--Esmeralda’s twin brother, who could not let his sister be and thus was said to have committed first the act of salmon swimming upstream and then that of lemmings hurling themselves into a waterfall or a high diver plunging into an empty pool.”

“How it began: Some might say it began in Cuba, in 1958, one year before Fidel Castro came down from the mountains. An apocalyptic horseman on a Jeep, he wore jet and mother-of-pearl rosaries twisted around his Galician-Spanish neck and into his gnarled and prickly Lebanese beard. 1958 was the year Arnaldo, Juan and Esmeralda’s father, were visited by the Southern Methodist missionaries passing through Santiago de Cuba in Oriente province.”

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Himilce Novas is among the more than 200 authors scheduled to appear at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on Saturday and Sunday at UCLA. Admission is free. For information, call (800) LA-TIMES, Ext. 7BOOK.