Pichon: Race and Revolution in Castros Cuba: A Memoir by Carlos Moore


Pichon: Race and Revolution in Castros Cuba: A Memoir
Title : Pichon: Race and Revolution in Castros Cuba: A Memoir
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : 1556527675
ISBN-10 : 9781556527678
Language : English
Format Type : Hardcover
Number of Pages : 395
Publication : First published January 1, 2008

Revolutionary black nationalist Carlos Moore breaks three decades of silence to challenge Castro's legacy in this controversial, behind-the-scenes memoir that explores the Revolution from a perspective of a "pichon," the racist Cuban term for a black of Haitian or West Indian descent. After more than thirty years in exile, continually under the threat of retribution from the Cuban regime, Moore steps forward to reveal the truth: Fidel's Revolution was a success for white Marxists. But for Cuban blacks, the Revolution was basically business as usual, a cover-up of their ongoing struggle for racial, political, and social enfranchisement. Fidel Castro and his men rose from the ranks of the patriarchal, white Spanish-Cuban elite, and the Revolution did not weaken those ties.

Pichon: Race and Revolution in Castros Cuba: A Memoir Reviews

  • Marek Eby

    In some ways I think the subtitle of this book is unfortunate. While the narrative centers on Cuba and the fate of the revolution, it is actually a wider story of race and revolution in the postwar period. Moore's life connects all sorts of threads of Black power and Liberation movements in this period: from the Black nationalists and Marxists of Harlem, to Revolutionary Cuba and Liberation struggles in Africa, to Paris and the Franco-African Diaspora writers, and beyond. Moore's is a story of a life lived through the broader currents of a Black left internationalism that is all too easy to erase today.

  • Jennifer Downes

    This book was given to me as a birthday gift in 2009 by a then friend signed by Carlos Moore. I have moved homes and countries and for a while misplaced it. I’m extremely glad that I finally got around to reading it. It’s funny too that the gift bearer and I have since parted ways due to a lack of integrity and respect on his part. Carlos was asked in his young life if he knew what a man was, I’m sure he knows now as I too know .

  • Kenna

    Eyeopening!!!!