EAirat

...10

itigg

DRINK!

Singular Saga

Gigi Anders recounts her unique

NOVI

Jewish Cuban American coming-of-age tale.

Castro's body when he's "dead and
bloated,
stinking on his back in the
Special to the Jewish News
tropical sun." Anders grew up think-
ing that the cigar-smoking dictator
ne of Gigi Anders' earliest
was Adolph Hitler's son.
memories is of refusing to
Shortly after settling in
hand over her red tricycle to
Washington, D.C., the nursery
a Cuban guerilla.
school-age Anders spent her days
Three-year-old Anders, on the air-
accompanying her parents to their
plane tarmac en route to America,
jobs at a psychiatric hospital, in part
hollered, "It's my birthday bike!"
because her mother believed that
until Fidel Castro's soldier surren-
summer camps were somehow linked
dered and let her take the favorite
to concentration camps.
toy into exile.
Frequent allu-
The tricycle was
sions to the
stolen in the Miami
Holocaust, the
airport, but the
grandparents' ten-
memories of the
dency to speak
Anders' family's
"Yiddish and
abrupt departure
Hebrew with
from their adopted
Cuban accents,
tropical homeland
Spanish with
lives on almost 45
Yiddish accents,
years later. In
and English with
Jubana! The
Yiddish-Cuban
Awkwardly True and
accents," and a
Dazzling Adventures
briefly described
of a Jewish Cubana
bat mitzvah are the
Goddess, Anders
main Jewish details
describes the
,
in the pork-and
"mondo bizarro
shrimp-loving
jaws of cross cultur-
Anders saga.
al hell" that go with
However, one could
being Jewish,
argue that the fami-
Cuban and
ly's left-wing poli-
American — and
Gigi Anders has written a
tics, passion for
having a crazy mom chatty tell-all.
shopping, abundant
on top of it all.
hours in psycho-
The book is chock
analysis — and zeal for food, albeit
full of interesting details as it tracks
unkosher food — are also quite
this quirky family's metamorphosis
Jewish.
from Eastern European shred-
As the book progresses, the focus
dwellers to Havana aristocrats to
seems to shift away from the Cuban
greenhorn Miami refugees to upper
Jewish idiosyncrasies and
middle class Washington
more onto Anders' coming
suburbanites. Born shortly
of age: alienation at a
before the revolution to
WASPy prep school, a dis-
young, beautiful and
turbing sexual relationship
wealthy parents, Anders
with an older man, a bizarre letter-
recalls sipping bottles of sweetened
writing relationship with Woody
milk (soon to be spiked with espres-
Allen and — finally — thwarted
so), wearing diamond earrings,
swimming in warm tropical water — wedding plans, the highlight of
which seems to have been the perfect
and hearing her mother's detailed
Tiffany's diamond engagement ring.
fantasies for her daughter's future
In between, Anders muses on her
wedding.
In exile, Anders' parents taught her ambivalence about Elian Gonzalez,
to count with a song about how
SINGULAR SAGA on page 43
many needles they would stick in

The new star of the Andiamo family.

JULIE WIENER

0

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x.,seco.dceq

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1006160

8/18
2005

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