Trying to Save the Family: A Memoir

Authors

Roberto J. Manzano, Florida International UniversityFollow

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Major/Program

Creative Writing

First Advisor's Name

Lynne Barrett

First Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Chair

Second Advisor's Name

Julie Marie Wade

Second Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Member

Third Advisor's Name

Vernon Dickson

Third Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Member

Keywords

Memoir, Cuban exiles, Cuban Revolution, Miami, dementia

Date of Defense

3-5-2019

Abstract

TRYING TO SAVE THE FAMILY: A MEMOIR uses incomplete and contradictory versions of single incidents and views of character that echo across time and place to assemble a narrative portrait of three generations. It looks at a family’s simultaneity of experience in Havana, leaving versus staying, and in Miami, adjusting versus failing to. The narrator employs interviews, photos, and family documents to investigate and interpret a complex inheritance. Like Joan Didion's Miami, this memoir focuses on history's patterns and repetitions. It starts in the fifties and ends in the present, as the narrator searches his family’s past to understand himself.

Identifier

FIDC007067

Recommended Citation

Manzano, Roberto J., "Trying to Save the Family: A Memoir" (2019). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 4054.
https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/4054