Kissing Fidel: A Memoir of Cuban American Terrorism in the United States (The Iowa Prize in Literary Nonfiction)

What does it mean to be instantly transformed into the most hated person in your community? After meeting Fidel Castro at a Havana reception in 1994, Cuban-born Magda Montiel Davis, founder of one of the largest immigration law firms in South Florida, soon found out. The reception—attended by hundreds of other Cuban émigrés—was videotaped for historical archives. In a seconds-long clip, Fidel pecks the traditional protocol kiss on Montiel Davis's cheek as she thanks him for the social benefits conferred upon the Cuban people. The video, however, was mysteriously sold to U.S. reporters and aired incessantly throughout South Florida. Soon the encounter was an international cause célèbre. Life as she knew it was over for Montiel Davis and her family, including a father who worked with the CIA to topple Fidel, a nohablo-inglés mother who lived with the family, her five children, and her Jewish Brooklyn-born attorney husband. Kissing Fidel shares the sometimes dismal, sometimes comical realities of an ordinary citizen being thrown into a world of death threats, mob attacks, and terrorism. "What does it mean to be instantly transformed into the most hated person in your own community? After meeting Fidel Castro at a Havana reception, Cuban-born Magda Montiel Davis, founder of one of the largest immigration law firms in South Florida, soon found out. The reception-attended by hundreds of other Cuban émigrés-was videotaped "for historical archives only." In a seconds-long clip, Fidel pecks the traditional protocol kiss on Magda's cheek and, based on Magda's many years of travel to the homeland, she thanks Fidel for the social benefits conferred upon the Cuban people. The video was sold to U.S. reporters and aired incessantly throughout South Florida, and the Magda-Fidel encounter tentacled as far as the international media, which promptly put an end to a free life for Magda and her family, including a father who worked with the CIA to topple Fidel, a no-hablo-inglés mother who lived with Magda, her five children, and Brooklyn-born husband, now known as Magdo. Forced to live under siege with the supposed protection of private bodyguards, Miami police, and FBI, Kissing Fidel shares the sometimes dismal, sometimes comical realities of an ordinary citizen being thrown into a world of death threats, mob attacks, and even drawings of Magda and Fidel in every imaginable Kama Sutra position"-- Provided by publisher