Photos
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- My great-grandmother, Andrea Hernandez Navarro, and her son, Eulalio. Names are important to me. In the novel, “Lalo” is named because of the lucky combination of letters. According to my grandmother, her brother was named Eulalio, or Lalo, for the same reason.
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- This is my great-grandfather, Antonio Navarro. I wish I had known him. My grandmother takes after his features, and from the stories she tells, a bit from his personality, too. He was a stern figure. For example, he demanded silence at the dinner table, and once quieted one of his sons by smashing a hot potato into his face. An earlier version of Love and Ghost Letters had a similar scene, but was later taken out.
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- From left to right, my aunt, Acela, my mother, Marta, and their cousins, Daisy and Nancy. This was the last time my mother and her sister were in Cuba. They visited shortly before the revolution, taking the ferry that once left from Miami. They grew up without their cousins. For me, this picture is bittersweet.
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- Pictured above are my grandparents, Mario and Maria Asela Garcia. Their first home in the United States was Los Angeles, California. All of the grandchildren call them Tito and Tita, short for abuelito and abuelita.