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Jeanine Cornillot was just two years old when her father, a former Cuban revolutionary turned anti-Castro militant, was sentenced to thirty years in a Florida prison for political bombings. His absence left a single mother to raise four children who kept his incarceration a secret and conjured a mythic father-hero out of his occasional letters. Jeanine’s Irish American mother struggled to support the family in suburban Philadelphia. Summers, she put Jeanine on a plane to Little Havana, where she lived with her Spanish-speaking grandparents and bilingual cousin—a sometimes unreliable translator. It was there in Florida that she met her father face to face, in the prison yards. As Cornillot travels between these two worlds, a wryly funny and unsentimental narrator emerges. Whether meeting her father for the first time at age six and hoping she looks Cuban enough, imagining herself a girl-revolutionary leading protest marches, dreamily planning her father’s homecoming after his prison break, or writing to demand an end to his forty-four-day hunger strike after he’s recaptured, young Jeanine maintains a hopeful pragmatism that belies her age. Eventually, a child’s mythology is replaced with an adult’s reality in a final reckoning with her father, remarkable for the unsparing honesty on both sides.From the Trade Paperback edition.
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FAMILY SENTENCE FAMILY SENTENCE The Search for My Cuban-Revolutionary, Prison-Yard, Mythic-Hero, Deadbeat Dad Jeanine Cornillot Beacon Press Boston ■ Beacon Press 25 Beacon Street Boston, Massachusetts 02108-2892 www.beacon.org Beacon Press books are published under the auspices of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations. © 2009 by Jeanine Cornillot All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 12 11 10 09 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is printed on acid-free paper that meets the uncoated paper ANSI/ NISO specifications for permanence as revised in 1992. Text design and composition by Wilsted & Taylor Publishing Services. This is a true story. However, some of the names of people and streets have been changed to protect privacy. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cornillot, Jeanine. Family sentence : the search for my Cuban-revolutionary, prison-yard, mythic-hero, deadbeat dad / by Jeanine Cornillot. p. cm. isbn 978-0-8070-0038-0 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Cornillot, Jeanine, 1965–. 2. Cornillot, Jeanine, 1965—Family. 3. Cuban Americans—Biography. 4. Irish Americans—Biography. 5. Fathers and daughters—United States. 6. Children of prisoners—United States—Biography. 7. Intercultural communication—United States. 8. Family reunions—United States. 9. Little Havana (Miami, Fla.)—Biography. 10. Philadelphia (Pa.)— Biography. I. Title. E184.C97C68 2009 306.874'2—dc22 2009011008 For Joan and Hector and the boys CONTENTS Five Things I Know ix ■ Kids’ Guidebook to Prison 1 ■ Open Skies 15 ■ Shadow Fathers 27 ■ Men Are People Too 39 ■ The Little Havana Abductions 51 ■ Brothers Big and Small 63 ■ Spanish Lesson 79 ■ Man in the House 89 ■ Good Crimes 107 ■ The Hunger Letters 121 ■ Getting By 139 ■ I ♥ Ponch 157 ■ Postcards from Prison 163 ■ Free at Last! 179 ■ Hard Times, Again 197 ■ The Worst Family Reunion Ever 205 ■ five Things I Know Growing up, this is what my mother told me about my father: 1) He is a Cuban revolutionary. 2) He was sentenced to thirty years in prison for anti-Castro bombings. 3) We don’t know if he is guilty or innocent. 4) You are forbidden to talk about his life in prison outside our house. 5) “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” is his favorite song.