Guajira, the Cuba girl

On the eve of leaving Cuba for Florida, a four-year-old girl promises her dying grandfather to return to her birthplace. That night an intruder sexually assaults her. As she adapts to her new American reality, she suffers distressing physical and emotional symptoms. Convinced that her daughter is possessed, her mother takes her to a Santeria priest for a cure. Years later, she returns to her homeland as a journalist, becomes entrapped in the game of espionage between Cuba and the U.S., suffers a devastating betrayal, and learns family secrets. Disillusioned by the experience, she embarks on a spiritual journey that leads to reconciliation, forgiveness, and a return to wholeness.

Guajira, the Cuban Girl is more than just a memoir of one woman confronting past traumas. It is a defiant examination of the ways all exiled people ache for a homeland, even when that homeland wounds us. Zita Arocha turns a quiet song of tragedy into a symphony of strength. The result is a testament to the resiliency of the human spirit.

-- Alex Espinoza, author of Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime

In her quietly moving memoir, Guajira, the Cuba girl, journalist Zita Arocha weaves an evocative, deeply thoughtful, and intimate love letter to her homeland. Arocha writes with a heartfelt yearning for her elusive Cuba - lost somewhere in her two countries' convoluted shadow and toxic politics. She pens words like a poet, carving pain, love, betrayal and joy from an unforgiving country and family. An extraordinary read!"

-- Alfredo Corchado, Mexico Bureau chief of The Dallas Morning News and author of Midnight in Mexico and Homelands.

Zita Arocha has written a memoir rich in detail and pathos from an accomplished journalist who has unleashed her reportorial talents on her own story of self-discovery and healing from heartbreaking childhood trauma in Cuba and exile.

-- Fabiola Santiago, Miami Herald columnist and author of Reclaiming Paris.

Zita Arocha is an award-winning bilingual journalist, writer, and educator. She left Cuba with her parents at age four in 1957, returned briefly two years later to visit relatives and instead witnessed the start of a cataclysmic social revolution. She has traveled to Cuba many times over the decades as a journalist and to see family. She has reported for The Miami Herald, The Washington Post, and national publications. She taught journalism at the University of Texas for two decades and led the National Association of Hispanic Journalists in the 90s and again in 2021. She was raised in Tampa, once considered the cigar capital of the world. She now lives in southern New Mexico with her husband, David Smith Soto, and three dogs, Sophie, Chico, and Rayo, whom they like to walk along the banks of the nearby Rio Grande.

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