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the Cuban child caught in a custody
battle between his American and
Cuban relatives.
It's a lotto pack into a memoir,
and the chatty, tangent-prone
Anders doesn't always deliver. At
times, her unfocused book can leave
its readers feeling a bit like Castro's
henchman after a showdown with
the plucky and very insistent toddler
Anders: exhausted and ready to sur-
render the tricycle, if only to get this
person to pipe down for a minute.

Memoir Or Biography?

Really, to call Jubana! a memoir is
not quite accurate. It's more like a
collection of anecdotes — some wry
and touching and others exceedingly
shallow — cobbled randomly
together by someone pumped up on
a steady diet of strong Cuban coffee,
diet cola and cigarettes. Indeed, what
narrative exists is frequently inter-
rupted by Anders' paeans to her
beloved cafe con leche, Tab and
Parliaments (as well as her favorite
skin care products, psychiatrists,
celebrity mags, anti-anxiety medica-
tions — even her rabbi).
Just as it flits from topic to topic,
rarely pausing to reflect or under-
stand, Jubana! also shifts quickly and
disconcertingly from tragic to petty
and back. One minute, Anders is
describing the death of her infant
sister, the next, she's joking about
her mother's enthusiasm for luxury
shopping; on one page, she's relating
in gruesome detail a miscarriage she
suffered at the age of 15 after an
abusive relationship her parents
implicitly encouraged, and a few
pages later, she's bitterly lamenting
how her fashionable mother pres-
sured her to soldier on in uncom-
fortably narrow shoes.
In some ways, the book is more
biography than memoir, as the most
intriguing and memorable character
is not the author but her overbear-
ing, vain, Kools-addicted mother,
whom Anders dubs "Muni Dearest."
Whenever Mami Dearest appears,
and this is in virtually every scene,
she is quoted in a painstaking
transliteration of her Cuban accent
that requires the reader to embark
on an equally painstaking decoding
process.
Here's Maori's response to Anders'
suggestion that they serve traditional
— and treif— Cuban food at her
ill-fated wedding: "Are joo

KREHSEE? Chehlfeesh and pork at
a Jeweesh weddeengh? Weeth de
RABBI der? Estas loca?"
If you breezed through that one,
try the following monologue: "De
point ees everybody ees an eenterra-
cial meex of everytheengh. Probably
Heetlehr was part mulatto like hees
demon eh-spawn, Feedehl. Dey both
bought eento dat beegehst lie dat
white ees right. Dey were de two
beegehst, most self-hayteengh beego-
hts! Dat was der whole problem! Ees
so ohbveeohs."
As I write this, my computer's
automatic spell check is overheating.

In Conversation

On the phone, Anders is just like
she appears in her book: chatty, easi-
ly distracted, mood swinging and
obsessed with her mother. At the
beginning of the conversation, she is
an upbeat Holly Golightly, perkily
talking about her next book project,
a collection of bite-sized stories ten-
tatively titled, Men May Come and

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Men May Go, But I Still Have My
Little Pink Raincoat: Lift and Love
In and Out of My Closet.
But shortly after sweetly promot-
ing the new book, which already has
a publishing contract, Anders is bit-
terly complaining about her "high-
maintenance" ex-fiance, who per-
suaded her to give up a comfortable
journalism job in North Carolina
and move to Hackensack, N.J., so
she could be closer to him — but
then broke up with her shortly
aftertvard.
"Part of the reason the writing
process was more tortured than nec-
essary was because I was recovering
from a bad romantic blow," she said
darkly. "It was tough to keep
Jubana! light and fun and keep the
narrative surging ahead when you
feel like not getting out of bed."
The heavily accented Maori
Dearest quotes, which Anders offers
up with stand-up comedian relish,
come as often in conversation as
they do in Jubana!
So what was Maras reaction to
the book? After attending her
daughter's reading at a Washington
Barnes & Noble, Mami apparently
pronounced (and this is my imper-
fect transliteration, not Anders'),
"Set's wan beeg piece of feection
and eet's a beeg exaggeration but
dat's wot works een cohmedy,
I guess." ❑

8/ 1 8

2005

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