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A review by uosdwisrdewoh
Cuba: My Revolution by Inverna Lockpez, José Villarrubia, Dean Haspiel
3.0
This autobiographical graphic novel is a laudible work that ends up bizarrely suffering from the sheer talent of its artist Dean Haspiel, who illustrates the (slightly fictionalized, I assume) story of an old family friend, Invera Lockpez. All throughout this book, Haspiel's cartooning is top notch, involving, and dynamic. The writing on the other hand never truly rises above straightforward and unadorned.
The book follows Sonya, who firmly believes in Castro's revolution from the start, to the point where she openly celebrates the firing squads ("Paredon! Paredon! Paredon!") as she casually walks down the street. But as time passes, she slowly falls disillusioned with the regime, with the book's centerpiece a horrifying series of torture sequences in jail. The book hints at the deep wells of cognitive dissonance and tension that comes with living in such a society, but it can be tough to get past the protagonist's stubborn naivety which shades into stupidity (at one point Sonya, a trained doctor, has to be told that her mother is seven months pregnant, and I'm still not certain if this is done to illustrate how single-mindedly she's dedicated to the revolution). There's a way to make a young misguided character sympathetic, but this book never quite gets there.
Still, Cuba: My Revolution is worth a look to get a quick sense of the insanity that was Cuba in the 60s not to mention to enjoy page after page of gorgeous Dean Haspiel storytelling.
The book follows Sonya, who firmly believes in Castro's revolution from the start, to the point where she openly celebrates the firing squads ("Paredon! Paredon! Paredon!") as she casually walks down the street. But as time passes, she slowly falls disillusioned with the regime, with the book's centerpiece a horrifying series of torture sequences in jail. The book hints at the deep wells of cognitive dissonance and tension that comes with living in such a society, but it can be tough to get past the protagonist's stubborn naivety which shades into stupidity (at one point Sonya, a trained doctor, has to be told that her mother is seven months pregnant, and I'm still not certain if this is done to illustrate how single-mindedly she's dedicated to the revolution). There's a way to make a young misguided character sympathetic, but this book never quite gets there.
Still, Cuba: My Revolution is worth a look to get a quick sense of the insanity that was Cuba in the 60s not to mention to enjoy page after page of gorgeous Dean Haspiel storytelling.