Days of Awe by Achy Obejas

• Synopsis
• Selected Passages
• Review Essay
• Author Interview
• Questions for Discussion
• Order this book from our bookstore

Publisher's Synopsis

Born in Cuba, Alejandra San José grew up in Chicago amid a close community of refugees who lived with the hope that one day Castro would fall and they could return to their Cuban homes. Though Ale was intrigued by the specter of Havana that colored her life as a child, her fascination eventually faded in her teens until all that was left was a profound respect for the intricacies of the Spanish language and the beautiful work her father did as a linguist and translator.

When her own job as an interpreter takes her back to Cuba, Ale is initially unmoved by the import of her return — until she stumbles upon a surprising truth: the San Josés, ostensibly Catholic, are actually Jews. They are conversos who converted to Christianity during the Spanish Inquisition.

Enlightened by a whole new vision of her past and her culture, Ale makes her way back through San José history, uncovering new fragments of the truth about the relatives who struggled with their own identities so long ago. Ale is lured one more time back to Cuba to make amends with the ancestral demons still lurking there — to translate her father’s troubling youthful experiences into the healing language of her own heart.

Selected Passages

Essay by Laura Sheppard-Brick

Days of Awe was born at a reading at New Words Books in Boston, when Judith Wachs, a fan, asked Achy Obejas if she was Jewish. When Obejas said no, Wachs told her that the name Obejas suggested her family might have been conversos, Spanish Jews who publicly converted to Catholicism to escape the inquisition, but secretly remained Jewish. While Days of Awe is a novel, not a memoir, it chronicles the journey of Alejandra San José, who is asked the same question, and finds answers that come to shape the way she views herself, her family and her relationships.

Ale San José, born in Cuba as the revolution triumphed but whisked off to the United States at age two, is in many ways characteristic of “hyphen-Americans.” She can pass in both worlds, but does not truly belong in either. This is the case even before she discovers her religious heritage. Though she knows that her mother Nena is a somewhat non-traditional Catholic, Ale feels little connection to conventional forms of the Catholic faith. As a young girl, Ale helps Nena fill water glasses for her shrine to the Blessed Virgin, but sees no reason to join her cousins at Mass. She does not learn until much later in life that her father Enrique is a secret Jew, hiding his practice from everyone, even in the heavily Jewish neighborhood of Rogers Park.

While Ale’s parents support the Catholic and American parts of her identity, it is her father’s friend Moisés Menach and his family who help shape her Jewish and Cuban parts. Ale meets Moisés the first time she returns to Cuba. There on business, Ale does not expect to be emotionally touched by this return to the land of her birth, and positions herself as an outsider. The Menachs take Ale in, treat her like family, and teach her what it means to live in Cuba. Moisés is a staunch revolutionary, but much of his family is not, and family debates often center on the problems with the revolution. Although Ale learns on her own that her father is a crypto-Jew, it is Moisés who helps piece together bits of her family history.

Though tumultuous, Ale’s relationship with her father is characterized by strong bonds. Both are translators. Both have mixed feelings about their national identity. Ale, born in Cuba but raised in Chicago, considers herself a Cuban, but wrestles with issues of authenticity. After being taken to a house in Havana that functions as a private club for foreigners, Ale argues with Orlando, Moises’ son-in-law, about her place in Cuban society. “Whatever you may think of me, I was born here… that means something. I was born here — like Martí [a nineteenth-century Cuban poet forced into exile because of his fight against the Spanish imperialists], like you.”

Enrique, born and raised in Cuba, considers himself Spanish. In fact, when Ale asks him if they might be Jewish, he says “We’re Spaniards, we’re Catholic.” Yet, despite this insistence, Enrique is a translator of Latin American, not Spanish, literature, and refuses numerous invitations to visit Spain as an academic, a self-imposed travel ban that extends only to Spain and Cuba. Perhaps because he is so distant and enigmatic, Ale is more drawn to her father than to her warm but emotionally transparent mother. Eventually Ale realizes that no matter how much of her father she understands, there will always be a multitude of unanswered questions.

Not that any of Ale’s relationships are simple. There is the case of Orlando, who, on Ale’s first visit to Cuba, offers to drive her back to her hotel. Somewhere along the way they get sidetracked and pull off of the highway to make love. Years and multiple visits later, Ale asks Orlando to write to her, and eventually receives what amount to scribbled journal entries, one of which begins “My wife is not my wife.” He goes on to explain that he and his wife were trying to be something they were not, that they eventually talked it over and secretly got divorced. Or consider Leni, Ale’s lover for five years. After they separate, Leni kills a Uruguayan doctoral student when she hits his car while driving drunk. Ale is called in, not as next of kin, but to translate for the doctoral student’s bereaved parents. When she finds that the drunk driver is a badly injured Leni, Ale becomes her caretaker, staying by her side long after Leni’s new girlfriend flees.

The non-linear construction of this book sometimes makes chronology difficult to determine. The narrative foreshadows details about Ale’s experiences. For example, although it is clear to the reader from the moment of Ale’s birth that Enrique is a Jew, Ale herself does not learn this until she is an adult. While this technique conveys the illusion of a woman telling her own story from a given point in time, it is frustrating to any reader trying to mold this story into something resembling a traditional narrative. Ultimately, though, a traditional narrative would be both inappropriate and disappointing; confusion is a trademark of people pulled between identities.

Through her use of language — dialogues take place in English, Spanish, and even Yiddish — Obejas constructs a realistic portrait of what it means to navigate the treacherous waters Ale confronts between her seemingly irreconcilable bits of self. Confusing, yes, but rewarding as well; Ale is finally able to celebrate her colorful identity. From Ale’s great grandfather, who changes his name from Antonio to Ytzak when he first connects with other Jews, to Ale herself, who celebrates Pesaj each year and says Kaddish for her father, but only publicly declares herself a Jew when confronted with proselytizing Christians at an airport, Days of Awe is a moving account of a family recovering their long lost Jewish heritage. In Ale’s words, “I’m a Jew... In that moment, under siege in a sterile airport, I avenged the injustices of five hundred years ago, even if only for an instant, even if only in my own small way.”

Author Interview:

Laura Sheppard-Brick: You are not Jewish, but Days of Awe is largely about Judaism and Jewish identity and has probably been widely read in the Jewish community. Has this in any way changed the way you relate to the Jewish community? Has it changed how you look at your own heritage?

Achy Obejas: When I began Days of Awe, I was pretty comfortable with my relationship to the Jewish community and to Judaism; to a great extent I even took it for granted. My father’s side of the family is descended from anusim [Spanish Jews, forced to convert to Christianity], my family lived for a long time in a neighborhood with a significant Jewish presence, and my brother, who lived in Israel for several years, is married to an Israeli. I can’t begin to count the number of Jewish lovers I’ve had, and how easy it was to slide in and out of each other’s cultures. I know the values I subscribe to — particularly when it comes to social justice and individual responsibility — are more the result of growing up around Jewish friends and having Jewish teachers than anything else. As far back as I can remember, I’ve always celebrated Pesach, and as an adult I’ve made a conscious choice to fast on Yom Kippur. But the more I studied and researched for Days of Awe, the more immersed I became in Jewish history and lore, the more complicated I saw any claim to identity. What I’ve said before is that I don’t have Jewish damage; that is, I wasn’t raised with any of the negative effects. I have Cuban damage, which is probably close enough — I really think there’s cultural affinity, if not outright overlap. If anything, writing this book has only deepened my respect for my Jewish ancestors and my gratitude to the Jewish people I’ve had in my life. The process, while wrenching at times, has been wholly enriching.

LS: Your first novel as well as many of your short stories speak very directly about issues in gay and lesbian communities, while in Days of Awe Ale’s bisexuality is presented as simply an unimportant fact of her life. Do you think that there are areas of society where homosexuality has become a non-issue? Do you attempt to influence perceptions of the queer community with your writing?

AO: I don’t think Ale’s sexuality is unimportant. To the contrary, I think it’s vital, like all our sexualities. Of course, many people live lives under siege because of who they love. This is an injustice. But there are some of us who are not conventionally heterosexual who are lucky enough to live lives in which we don’t have to hold up a placard or struggle every minute. Sometimes that means living in a civil society where different sexualities are protected, other times it may simply mean societal lassitude. Sometimes — like in my case in Cuba — it means carving a niche with different elements, which may include privilege, a certain indifference, or any other set of circumstances. When it comes to sexuality, I've never been especially interested in assimilation but I am interested in normalization. In Days of Awe, I tried to just let everybody be whatever they were going to be, to live and love according to their hearts rather than any particular label. What I hope my writing does is touch readers, no matter who they are.

LS: Days of Awe draws many parallels between Cubans and Jews. Do you see these as authentic similarities, or just the creations of someone trying to reconcile disparate identities?

AO: I honestly believe there is tremendous cultural affinity, if not overlap, between Cubans and Jews. I have a whole list in Days of Awe, kind of tongue-in-cheek, which ends with both groups thinking they’re god’s chosen people. But some things are real: the emphasis on education, the intense importance of family, all the weird tensions and ambivalences around assimilation and what it means, the stubbornness too — although that plays more to stereotypes. We share some of those too: being passionate, and loud, and the whole connection with commerce. Cubans are called the Jews of the Caribbean, and that springs from a prejudice toward both groups. I think what’s most important for me is that we’re both dynamically spiritual people — and by that I don’t mean necessarily mean religious. What I’m talking about is having a sense of the divine in everyday life, not just awe but also a sense of accessibility and intimacy: among Cubans we call that speaking to god as “tu” instead of “usted.”

LS: In your earlier books you italicize non-English words, but in Days of Awe you do not. What made you decide to break with convention in this way?

AO: I honestly didn’t give this much thought when I was writing my first two books. It was just the way it was done. But the issue came into greater relief during the writing of Days of Awe for a lot of reasons. The first is that I read Drown by Junot Diaz, in which he just blows the whole italicization thing out the window. I was surprised with how easily it flowed. Then I wrote a piece for Story magazine and the editor, who had also worked with Junot, kept taking the italics out and I had to keep arguing to put them in, each time less convinced of my own defense. At the same time, I wrote a piece for the Tribune, a commentary piece — which is not what I usually do — and I waxed poetically about the fluidity and progress of language, how only a few years ago, bodega and intifada, as two examples, were not part of the American vocabulary. So I began to mull over this whole idea of singling out words, of emphasizing the other rather than the commonality. And, then, to seal the deal, I met Junot in Havana. Our conversation went like most of my conversations with other bilingual friends: we just kept code-switching. Except that, because it was Junot, I kept imagining our words in different typefaces and fonts and it became quite clear what I had to do.

LS: I understand that you did a lot of research for this novel. In what ways did this differ from writing your first novel? How did the research affect the creative process?

AO: I did research for Memory Mambo too: all the stuff about Bartolome de las Casas, the details about the attack on the Moncada barracks by Fidel Castro and his rebels, that sort of thing. I’ve always loved history, I’ve always been fascinated by the “what if ... ?” When I began Days of Awe, I knew it would take a bit more research than Memory Mambo but I had no way of anticipating how one thing would lead to another, how one world would open up to still another. Especially because so much of Days of Awe is about hidden history, much was difficult to access. A lot was brand new to me and, being a journalist by trade, I felt compelled to try and find at least two sources for any one thing before really going with it. Also, information was scattered in Cuba, Spain and the U.S. And much depended on interpretation. I’ll give you a good example: Most Cuban Jews – though not necessarily most Cubans – know Luis de Torre, a Jew, was Columbus’ interpreter and the first European to set foot in Cuba. But when the story’s told, the fact that he was on Columbus’ ship not out of a sense of adventure but out of desperation – the Order of Expulsion went into effect the very day Columbus sailed – is rarely mentioned. Neither is there ever much discussion that most of the crew members who stayed in Cuba after the first voyage seemed to have mostly Sephardic last names, or that the languages they spoke outside of Spanish were Hebrew and Aramaic. These things are not accidents or inconsequential, they are meaningful, and they matter in the history and development of Cuba.

LS: How have your own experiences visiting Cuba been similar to or different from Ale’s?

AO: In Days of Awe, Ale has two very intense visits to Cuba, and then appears to stay. I’ve visited so many times now, I’ve lost count. And though I tend to stay for months at a time, as much as I want to, I can’t stay in the same way she does. It’s just not possible right now. Also, my partner of many years is a Cuban national who lives in Cuba, so that defines my relationship to the island in many ways that are different than most people I know. I think, though, that what Ale and I have in common in this regard is a sense of Cuba as home, as the place where we, ultimately, belong.