draft of the introduction to the book.

Porque siempre la realidad es llena de mentiras…..
Uncle Lu told me that writing the truth would always make someone angry. I wanted to write an academic article about a very famous man and relative of mine from Cuba. We own a diary which provides new information about a war hero from Havana and would literally change the way scholars would think about this man, but I could not publish anything because of who it would anger and their closeness to the family. Besides this case, there have been other instances while writing my dissertation where I have needed a document, but couldn’t find the document for the proper years. As a solution, I was told to use a document from different years that proved my point and say it was from the appropriate years. But I refused, I was a historian and historians didn’t lie about the past—or not so blatantly. Instead, we just made up what we thought a real-live document reflected about the past. We call it “analysis,” an “examination”. A historian’s lie is different. The lie is more legitimate, based on a perspective of the past formed in the present. A historian’s lie could reflect bits of truth. But this information only pertains to my academic life.
About my own personal history, I have a hard time keeping my facts straight and that could present a problem given I am about to tell several stories. Please excuse me if you see something that seems unbelievable in these tales. To be honest, I often didn’t believe the stories until I was provided with some kind of evidence or some document or photo proving whatever appeared extreme to be truth. Please remember I AM a historian. I need documents, photos, evidence, please. But still, I know some of these cuentitos will seem impossible. They will seem unreal and even eccentric. I think the biggest truth to learn in all of these stories, and something I am telling you upfront, is that I come from an odd group of people and I am lucky to walk straight, let alone speak well and succeed in school. I have no idea what is authentic and fantastic, but I have tried to siphon out what is truly and overwhelmingly impossible in these stories. What you have here is what math geeks would refer to as “the raw data set.” I am giving you the basics as I know them.
You see in the case of these stories the blurriness between fact and fiction is constant and difficult to decipher. I believe what I am telling you is the truth, but what I consider the accurate is based on my memory and on what others have told me. Even more worrisome is that these stories are based on my point of view, which may not have the facts completely straight. But these cuentitos are described in the ways that I experienced them. I have no reason to lie, but I have learned that everyone’s reality is filled with mentiras. I am sure that cardinal rule extends to me, since it does affect everyone else who surrounds me.
My family and I are from the Caribbean. Caribenos love to tell stories and they also love to exaggerate and add pizzazz to actual events. My friend Naomi is one very wonderful example, in that on a routine basis, she exaggerates about minutia. “Today I went to the market and they must have had 3,000 canelopes, Clari.” “So, Naomi, did they have like 30?” “Yes, they had some enormous amount of canelopes, can you believe it? I was amazed.” Or, “the plane ticket was so expensive, Clari. From Miami to San Diego, the plane cost like 900 dollars with taxes and stuff.” “Naomi, that ticket couldn’t cost more than 400 dollars.” “Yeah, I mean, imagine 400 dollars for a plane ticket, can you imagine? It might as well be 9, 400 dollars.” “Yeah, totally, Naomi.”
So if Naomi can go off about the plane tickets and canelopes, you can imagine the exaggerations that my friends and family make about the big events-- the monumental events-- that changed our lives and histories forever. But I have no idea where fact and fiction end, I just know it doesn’t matter anymore, because the fiction and the facts blend together to make my dysfunctional family’s history. Like everyone around me, I have a knack to put some flare into a bland story without even knowing it. “Because,” as my mother explained to me when I asked why Naomi exaggerated and lied about her minute and daily dealings (“Mami, seriously, who cares whether there were 3,000 or 30 canelopes at the market…. I get the point, there were a lot of canelopes, why doesn’t she just say there were a lot? Why say 3,000? Geesh!”), “Naomi isn’t lying in her mind, those lies are just an expression of how she really perceives the world. To her, and many people, the world is in a hyper-state. You are the only one who really registers her perspective of reality as a lie. But to her, that is just the way things are. And for those who exaggerate just to exaggerate…. Well, sometimes you just need some fun to get you through each day. Stop being judgmental, Clarisín. Abuelita always tells me you are judgmental and I think it might be true. ”
So this book will be a story about my realidad, full of mentiras and verdades.
Porque siempre la realidad es llena de mentiras…..