I Gave You All I Had

Download or read book I Gave You All I Had written by Zoé Valdés and published by Arcade Publishing. This book was released on 1999 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I Gave You All I Had introduces Cuca Martinez - a.k.a. Cuquita, Cuchita, the Girl - the youngest child in a brood of five, born in prerevolutionary Cuba to a flighty would-be actress and a Chinese enthusiast of New World riches upon whom fortune has consistently failed to smile. At sixteen, she heads for Havana in search of work."--BOOK JACKET. "There, a pair of strumpets named La Mechanga and La Puchanga introduce her to the sweet mischief of nighttime Havana, in which she meets Juan, the love of her life - only to see him disappear for eight years. When Juan resurfaces on the eve of the Revolution, Cuca believes her dreams are finally to be realized, but the political climate and Juan's shady dealings force him into hasty exile in America."--BOOK JACKET. "And so Cuca, like Cuba itself, waits. She waits for the promised dreams - of happiness, of plenty, of joy, of love - to arrive, and watches her country slide into a barren, repressive slumber. And while she waits, Cuca and her friends struggle, in the midst of those shattered dreams, to survive: they improvise, they scavenge, they make love, they remember, and above all, they talk."--BOOK JACKET.