Garcia, Luis M. 1959–

PERSONAL:

Born 1959, in Cuba, immigrated to Australia with family in 1972; married; children: one son, one daughter.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer and public relations executive. Worked for many years as a journalist, then political advisor, then in corporate communications.

WRITINGS:

(With Kerry Chikarovski) Chika, Lothian Books (South Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 2004.

Child of the Revolution: Growing Up in Castro's Cuba, Allen & Unwin (Crows Nest, New South Wales, Australia), 2007.

Also author of the Luis M. Garcia blog.

SIDELIGHTS:

A native of Cuba who has lived for more than three decades in Australia, Luis M. Garcia writes of his young life in Cuba in his memoir Child of the Revolution: Growing Up in Castro's Cuba. Garcia was twelve years old when the family left Cuba, fleeing from what the author describes as a repressive regime. The author recounts the failure of the family business as Cuba turns to communism and begins to take over private businesses. He also writes of his father's imprisonment at a labor camp after he requested permission to emigrate from Cuba. As Garcia recounts his young life and the disappearance of Cuba's middle class, he also writes of his extended family in Cuba, which includes both those who adhered to communistic beliefs and those opposed to the new regime of Fidel Castro. In a review of Child of the Revolution in Publishers Weekly, a contributor noted that the author provides ‘an intriguing corrective to romanticized accounts of socialist Cuba.’ Sacha Molitorisz, writing on the Sydney Morning Herald Web site, commented: ‘Garcia's writing has an engaging immediacy and the surprise is that the prose is not just efficient and fact-filled. Instead, it's thick with cigar smoke and summer sweat. That is, alive with personality."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Garcia, Luis M., Child of the Revolution: Growing Up in Castro's Cuba, Allen & Unwin (Crows Nest, New South Wales, Australia), 2007.

PERIODICALS

Publishers Weekly, March 12, 2007, review of Child of the Revolution, p. 45.

Times Literary Supplement, December 8, 2006, Luis M. Garcia, review of Child of the Revolution, p. 26.

ONLINE

Allen & Unwin Web site,http://www.allenandunwin.com/ (October 7, 2007), brief profile of author.

Sydney Morning Herald Web site,http://www.smh.com.au/ (June 19, 2006), Sacha Molitorisz, review of Child of the Revolution.