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| Acknowledgments | |
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| Prologue: Some Reflections before I Begin | |
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| Scarsdale to Havana | |
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| A Politically Liberal, Somewhat Adventurous Family | |
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| Writing Was Everything to Me | |
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| A Cold War Mentality Characterized the National Psyche | |
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| With Gregory's Birth We Were Two | |
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| Death of One Era, Birth of Another | |
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| Mexico Seemed a Welcoming Venue | |
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| How to Express an Experience As Subjective As It Was Objective | |
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| We Aren't Writing about the Revolution; We Are the Revolution | |
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| Visiting Cuba Was a Statement | |
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| Justice Was a Logical Choice | |
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| I Decided to Stay On for Another Couple of Weeks | |
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| Transition | |
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| Doors Opened and Tens of Thousands of Cuban Children Burst Forth | |
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| I Sensed an Authentic and Growing Democracy | |
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| Fidel's Speeches Were Never Formulaic or Dull | |
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| Arnaldo Orfila Grabbed My Hand and Pulled | |
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| That Morning I Dressed Ana in a Tiny Pink One-Piece Cotton Suit | |
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| An Emptiness That Numbed Me to the Core | |
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| I Would Spend Nineteen Days in Prague | |
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| Settling In | |
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| The Door to Room 506 Stood Open | |
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| Our Bodies Remembered One Another, Ana's and Mine | |
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| A Socialist Process Was Flourishing in the U.S. Sphere of Influence | |
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| Patriotism Is Always Double-Edged | |
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| It Was Important That All Children Have Access to Education | |
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| Now It Was Time to Enjoy What Was Left of Our Family | |
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| Old Values Sometimes Clashed with Those the Revolution Was Working to Instill | |
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| Ximena Stood Her Ground | |
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| Food, Food, Food | |
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| Our First Taste of Revolutionary Bureaucracy | |
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| An Amazing Collection of Creative Recipes | |
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| Production and Consumption Ran an Unbroken Line from Field to Dinner Table | |
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| Ten Million Tons of Sugar and Eleven Fishermen | |
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| I Wanted a Second Opinion | |
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| Cuba Wanted Her Fisherman Back | |
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| The Ten-Million-Ton Goal Would Not Be Met | |
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| A Poetry Contest and a Beauty Pageant | |
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| A Phone Call from Casa | |
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| Another Phone Call from Casa | |
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| I Chose You Because I Knew You Would Hate It | |
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| Casa Was an Extraordinary Institution | |
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| Deeper and More Complex Layers of Deception | |
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| Women and Difference | |
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| I Asked to Remember | |
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| I'd Start My Workday Eager to Be of Service | |
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| A Project I Wanted to Pursue | |
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| I Wanted to Find Out What Life for Cuban Women Was Like | |
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| I Was an Incipient Feminist | |
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| Cuban Women Now | |
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| Piropos | |
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| Magin | |
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| The Important Thing Is That We Rectify Our Mistakes | |
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| Information and Consciousness | |
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| Lines Outside Bookstores Were Longer Than Lines to Buy Bread | |
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| Bad Press | |
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| Politics Is Never Separate from Culture | |
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| He Asked Me to Go to the Local Precinct | |
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| Changing Hearts, Minds, and Law | |
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| What Is Humanism? | |
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| I Am Excited about This Meeting | |
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| Big Changes | |
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| Referendum on the New Socialist Constitution | |
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| The Meat Problem | |
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| Up Against the Hard Wall of Convention | |
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| A Few of the Lenin Girls | |
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| "Poetry, Like Bread, Is for Everyone" | |
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| Potato Dirt under My Fingernails | |
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| That's Where the Poets Came In | |
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| Varadero Celebrated Its Ninetieth Anniversary | |
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| Promoting the Arts Has Been a Priority | |
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| Who's Going to Tell Me I Didn't Understand That Poem! | |
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| An Aspirin Big As the Sun | |
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| I Had a Lot of Poetry in Me As a Child | |
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| Their Male Co-Workers Served Them Lunch | |
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| We Are Brothers and Sisters of Africans, and for the Africans We Are Ready to Fight! | |
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| Luz Began to Speak about Life in the Concentration Camps | |
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| I Did Find and Develop a New Language | |
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| And Now for the Cultural Part | |
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| One of the Prisoners Would Pick Me Up at the House | |
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| El Quinquenio Gris | |
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| So Familiar, Yet So Eternally Other | |
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| Unnecessary and Sad | |
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| El Quinquenio Gris | |
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| Telephone Calls and Emails Began to Fly Back and Forth | |
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| Cuban Intellectuals and Artists Should Not Fear a Change in Cultural Policy | |
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| A Language Inhabited by All | |
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| Only Friendship and Poetry Can Erase Hatred and Resentments | |
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| Loss to the Whole When Some Voices Are Silenced | |
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| I Think of Martin Niemoller | |
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| The Sandinistas | |
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| Two, Three, Many Vietnams | |
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| I Remember a Childhood Indignation | |
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| The Dead Do Not Die Completely | |
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| A Catholic Priest Saying Mass for a Communist Poet | |
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| "Que Se Rinda Tu Madre!" | |
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| Poet in a Nation of Poets | |
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| A Poet's Voice | |
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| Can Someone Come Over to Use the Ditto? | |
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| To the Mother I Loved So Much | |
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| I Wanted to Retrace Jose Benito's Last Moments | |
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| Today We Feel More Like Equals | |
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| The Seeds of Decadence and Power Abuse | |
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| A Painful Period in My Life | |
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| A Question of Power | |
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| I Remember | |
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| This May Feel Like the Worst of Times | |
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| Visual Messages Now Circle the Globe in Seconds | |
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| Power in the Hands of People | |
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| It Was a Landscape That Inspired | |
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| Power Kept Its Own Vigil | |
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| The Ability to Manipulate through Coercion and Shame | |
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| Feminism Has Taught Us about Power | |
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| From Each According to Their Ability, to Each According to Their Need | |
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| Which of Socialism's Original Projects Have Survived? | |
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| A Tragic Waste | |
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| The Human Spirit Requires Freedom | |
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| Power As a Political Category | |
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| I Long to See Diverse Visions and Unique Talents | |
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| Epilogue | |
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| There Were Some Challenges | |
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| The United States Wasn't About to Permit Another Cuba in Latin America | |
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| The Shift in Temperature Paralleled My Emotional State | |
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| I Believe They Come Up with a Positive Tally | |
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| Still Alive, Still Moving and Changing | |
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| I Am a Hybrid | |
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| Imagination, Curiosity, and Revelation | |
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| Notes | |
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| Index | |