Ada Ferrer reflects on family history and forces shaping Cuba and the U.S. in new memoir

Geoff Bennett:

Historian and Pulitzer Prize winner Ada Ferrer has spent her career exploring history, identity, and memory.

In her new book, "Keeper of My Kin," she turns inward, tracing her own family story across generations, while examining the larger forces that shaped Cuba and the U.S. alike.

I recently spoke with her about her family history and the stories that families choose to carry forward.

Ada Ferrer, welcome to the "News Hour."

Ada Ferrer:

Well, it's great to be here, Geoff.

Geoff Bennett:

This book begins with this image you paint of your mother holding you in her arms as she leaves Cuba. This was in 1963. But she also leaves behind your brother, Poly.

And you write that your mother told and retold this migration story for decades, but she omitted that central fact. Why do you think silence became such a key factor in your family history?

Ada Ferrer:

Yes.

Well, it's strange. My mother was a storyteller. She'd love telling stories and she would repeat them over and over again. So the story of our leaving Cuba is -- the way I tell it in the book, the struggle at the airport, her heels, me in her arms weighing her down, the person in Mexico who helped us arriving in the Freedom Tower. It goes on and on.

And yet in that narration, he was never there. On some level, it makes no sense, because my brother, Poly, was never a secret. He was always a part of our life. I -- my mother used to send him presents. She used to read me his letters. I used to kiss his picture. He was always there as an absence.

So it really made no sense for her to leave him out of the story, but I think it was her own guilt about having left him that meant that, when she tried to tell this story of her departure, her departure with me, it was a story about us, the two of us facing the world.

And to tell the story that way, adding my brother left behind just kind of interrupted it a little too much.

Geoff Bennett:

And the most devastating part of that story is that she never said goodbye.

Ada Ferrer:

Yes.

Geoff Bennett:

For folks who haven't read this book yet, help us understand why he didn't make the trip.

Ada Ferrer:

Well, my brother was 9 years old when we left, and he was her son from her first marriage. So, Poly's father was a member of the Revolutionary Police. This is year four of the Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro, and he didn't think it would look good for his son to leave for the U.S.

And so he denied permission. And I think he was also kind of an vindictive man and just didn't want my mother to be happy. And so he refused to sign the paperwork that was needed for Poly to get his passport and travel with us.

And everyone thought, my mother thought, my grandmother thought, my aunts thought, my father who left before we did and was already in New York, we all thought that when my mother and I left that Poly's father would see that he should give permission and that he would relent. But he never did. And so the separation kind of stretched on and on.

And then in terms of her not saying goodbye, I didn't -- that part of the story, I didn't learn until I was a little older. But, for me, it was kind of crushing. I just couldn't -- I couldn't imagine it. And it just made it hurt that much more.

But then, as a historian, as a person, I always try to put myself in other people's shoes. It was a different time.

Geoff Bennett:

You mentioned that you're a historian. I would add that you're one of the country's leading historians of Cuba.

Ada Ferrer:

Thank you.

Geoff Bennett:

What did it mean as you were writing this book, writing this memoir, putting the historian's lens on your own family? You exist in this sort of dual context of historian and daughter. What did that -- how did you negotiate that?

Ada Ferrer:

Yes. There's a way in which I have been doing it all my life, or all my writing life, certainly. I became a historian decades ago. I have always worked on Cuba. My decision to work on Cuba had everything to do with who I am and the story of our family and where we came from.

So I have always been a historian who feels herself and feels her family to be part of the story. My family was a very humble family, and our story was made by history. Everything that happened in our family, the migration, the family separation, unfolded in this broader historical context of the Cuban Revolution, of U.S.-Cuban relations, of U.S. immigration policy.

And all those things, which we tend to think of in abstract geopolitical and bird's-eye kind of view, all those things have an enormous impact on families day to day.

Geoff Bennett:

You know, what struck me about your story, is the way your mother preserved letters and photographs and greeting cards, I mean, small scraps of paper.

Ada Ferrer:

Right.

Geoff Bennett:

This living archive for you. Do you think that that was -- it struck me as an act of resistance against erasure?

Ada Ferrer:

Yes, yes, absolutely. I mean, I think that's the perfect way to put it. And she was doing it her whole life.

And then after she died, I mean, I knew she saved things, but the way she saved things was a complete surprise. So she actually labeled artifacts around the house with masking tape on the bottom. But the main thing that she saved and the thing that was most important for this book is that she -- and I didn't know these existed until after both my parents had died.

The main thing she saved was the letters that my brother had written to her after we left. So we left on April 27, 1963. His first letter is dated May 4, 1963. And so these are letters written by my brother Poly. He's a little boy., His handwriting's not good. He makes lots of spelling errors, very little punctuation.

And he's writing her, writing to her about his life, about the family, about being left. But he doesn't write -- it's interesting. He doesn't write with a lot of emotion or a lot of palpable emotion. But you read the letters carefully and the emotion is there.

So he will say things like -- there was one that just really got to me. He said: "Mommy, if you only knew how happy I get when I receive a letter from there. It makes me so happy. I get so happy that sometimes it makes me sad."

He's a 9-, 10-year-old boy and the weeks are going by and the months are going by, and there's no re-encounter. And those were brutal to read.

Geoff Bennett:

The title of this book, "Keeper of My Kin," it feels like a declaration of responsibility. Did you feel that you owed your family something?

Ada Ferrer:

Yes, in some ways, I feel like I owe them everything.

So it's interesting. My mother saved all these things. I think she knew -- I mean, she was saving it for all of us, but I think she always knew that I would do something with it. I was always asking her questions. She would roll her eyes. She knew what it was about.

My father -- I talk about this in the book. My parents both had sixth grade educations, right? They both grew up in the countryside. They came here and she worked in a clothing factory. He worked as a short-order cook in a Manhattan hotel.

In his '70s, my father began to write. And he wrote and he wrote and he wrote. And he wrote letters to Fidel Castro and Latin American presidents and Katie Couric and George Bush and Bill Clinton. You name it. He just -- he wrote poems. He wrote all kinds of things.

But I would see all the papers kind of get -- the pile of papers get bigger and bigger. And I always said to him, you can't throw those papers out. Those papers are mine. No one threw them out. I think they always knew that I would take those papers, that I would do something with them, at the very least that I would read them, you know?

Geoff Bennett:

And write a book like this.

Ada Ferrer:

And write -- yes, I'm not sure about that.

(Laughter)

Geoff Bennett:

I read a lot of memoirs in this job.

Ada Ferrer:

Yes.

Geoff Bennett:

And this one, this is -- it's a triumph. Congratulations.

Ada Ferrer:

Thank you. Thank you.

Geoff Bennett:

And thank you for speaking with me about it.

Ada Ferrer:

Yes, my pleasure.

Geoff Bennett:

The book is "Keeper of My Kin: Memoir of an Immigrant Daughter."

Ada Ferrer, a real pleasure to speak with you.

Ada Ferrer:

Yes, great to be here. Thank you.