Palm Crows

Author: Virgil Suárez

Publisher: University of Arizona Press (2001)

Hibiscus, banyan trees, and royal palms. Mango jam, white slices of sugarcane, and oxtail stew. Childhood games with fireflies and snail shells. These are images of a Cuba that many remember and others have never known, captured here in the powerful poems of Virgil Suárez.

Born in Havana in the wake of the Cuban Revolution, Suárez is now one of more than a million Cubans living in the United States. In Palm Crows Suárez offers a compelling canción of loss, longing, and memory as he explores the meaning of exile. In poems that range from playful and fantastic to elegiac and meditative, he writes about "the in-betweenness of spirit" of those who have left their home and must try to forge a new one in the United States.

Palm Crows shows us an almost mythical Cuba, offering a compelling testament both to the immigrant experience and to our own search for home.