Virgil Suarez

Infinite Refuge Virgil Suarez

A lyrical patchwork of recollections of people and places left behind

"So much left behind. Our house. Our family. Our lives together," Virgil Suárez writes in his memoir of life as a Cuban refugee. Beginning with the saga of the balseros that unfolds before Suárez's eyes, when, at his mother's insistence, he turns on the TV and witneesses a confrontation between the Coast Guard and the Cuban rafters, Suárez draws his memories of his family and friends leaving Cuba and ties these through verse and prose to his experience of exile.

Rather than decry the politics of persecution under a dictatorship or celebrate the freedoms enjoyed in the United States, Suárez instead brings life to his memories on the page. Suárez writes, "Those old ghosts of places we knew, lived in moments we survived, those are the things I'm afraid of." But those old ghosts populate his stories: the shadows of his extended family standing on the other side of the glass at the departure gate in the airport, the next-door neighbor of his childhood with whom he plays firing squad, his mother's last wish to return to Cuba, and his promise to his father not to return until a change comes to Cuba.