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Family Sentence: The Search for My Cuban-Revolutionary, Prison-Yard, Mythic-Hero, Deadbeat Dad Paperback – September 21, 2010

by Jeanine Cornillot (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 7 ratings
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Jeanine Cornillot was just two years old when her father, a former Cuban revolutionary turned anti-Castro militant, was sentenced to thirty years in a Florida prison for political bombings. His absence left a single mother to raise four children who kept his incarceration a secret and conjured a mythic father-hero out of his occasional letters.
 
Jeanine’s Irish American mother struggled to support the family in suburban Philadelphia. Summers, she put Jeanine on a plane to Little Havana, where she lived with her Spanish-speaking grandparents and bilingual cousin—a sometimes unreliable translator. It was there in Florida that she met her father face to face, in the prison yards.
 
As Cornillot travels between these two worlds, a wryly funny and unsentimental narrator emerges. Whether meeting her father for the first time at age six and hoping she looks Cuban enough, imagining herself a girl-revolutionary leading protest marches, dreamily planning her father’s homecoming after his prison break, or writing to demand an end to his forty-four-day hunger strike after he’s recaptured, young Jeanine maintains a hopeful pragmatism that belies her age.
 
Eventually, a child’s mythology is replaced with an adult’s reality in a final reckoning with her father, remarkable for the unsparing honesty on both sides.
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  1. Print length
    240 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Beacon Press
  4. Publication date
    September 21, 2010
  5. Dimensions
    5.3 x 0.69 x 8.2 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0807006173
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0807006177
  8. See all details
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The Amazon Book Review
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“¡Finalemente! As incisive as she is lyrical, funny as she is profound, Cornillot dislodges the bolero-and-palm-tree nostalgia associated with Cuban American identity, and asserts claim to a new and very real history.” 
—H. G. Carillo, author of Loosing My Espanish
 
“Adds to the ever-growing jigsaw puzzle that is the Cuban American experience . . . with verve and charm.”
—Oscar Hijuelos, author of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

“A charming, often sorrowful study of learning to let go of a myth and love a person.”
—Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

An Emmy Award–winning producer, Jeanine Cornillot began her career as a documentary editor, and has written and produced shows for CBS, NBC, and ABC. Cornillot has also coproduced a feature public radio documentary based on Family Sentence, which aired on BBC radio. She lives in Los Angeles.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Beacon Press (September 21, 2010)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0807006173
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0807006177
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.8 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.3 x 0.69 x 8.2 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 7 ratings

About the author

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Jeanine Cornillot

Jeanine Cornillot

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An Emmy Award-winning producer, Jeanine Cornillot began her career as a documentary editor and has written and produced shows for CBS, NBC, and ABC. Cornillot has also co-produced a feature public radio documentary, Family Sentence, with Transom.org. She lives in Los Angeles.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
7 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Kimberly Merriman
5.0 out of 5 stars A Warm & Inspiring Read
Reviewed in the United States on September 19, 2010
Verified Purchase
I always enjoy reading a good memoir, especially one as insightful as Family Sentence. Since other posted reviews have already nicely summarized the book, let me simply describe what I found most appealing. The family struggles were colorful and relatable. I've been a single mom (son now grown), so this aspect of the story really hit home for me. I imagine current single parents will gain inspiration and wisdom when reading this book.

Another thing I found quite interesting was the cultural differences between the two families (mother's and father's side). To my academic eye, it served as a contrasting case study in how the family social context informs sensemaking. It reminded me that our interpretation of life events is more malleable--more susceptible to influence--than you'd expect. This got me reflecting on my own childhood and how my own view of 'reality' took shape. Good, thought-provoking stuff!
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BermudaOnion
3.0 out of 5 stars A Child's Search for her Father
Reviewed in the United States on October 30, 2009
Jeanine Cornillot grew up outside of Philadelphia with her mother, grandmother, aunt and three brothers. As the youngest of the four children, she doesn't remember ever living with her father. Her mother told her these five things about her father:

1. He is a Cuban revolutionary.
2. He was sentenced to thirty years in prison for anti-Castro bombings.
3. We don't know if he is guilty or innocent.
4. You are forbidden to talk about his life in prison outside our house.
5. "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" is his favorite song.

Jeanine's home life was happy enough even though her family barely managed to keep their head above water. She spent time in Miami with her father's side of the family every summer even though she doesn't speak Spanish and most of them don't speak English. They didn't talk about her father much either, but they did take Jeanine to visit him in prison a few times.

As a child Jeanine imagined all kinds of things about her father, but sadly, most of them weren't true, and, as an adult, she is forced to face the reality of who is and decide what role she wants him to have in her life.

Family Sentence: The Search for My Cuban-Revolutionary, Prison-Yard, Mythic-Hero, Deadbeat Dad by Jeanine Cornillot sounded like a book I would just love, but it ended up being just okay for me. I never really felt connected to the author as a child, although I did when she was an adult. At times it seemed like the book focused too much on mundane daily things that weren't relevant to the story. I did find myself greatly admiring the author's mother - she never said a bad word about her children's father, always stayed upbeat and made sure her children visited their father's family on a regular basis. The book left me wanting to know more about Jeanine's feelings as a child.
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Karen S. Vos
5.0 out of 5 stars How a Clan's Mythological Narrative is Created
Reviewed in the United States on October 17, 2009
Family Sentence is David Sedaris meets Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. It is an exploration into why and how clans create collective/individual mythological narratives. The book tracks a family's history all centered around the author's imprisoned father. Like Willie Loman, the father, Hector Cornillot, is a hero to some and a grave failure to others. Hector's extended Cuban clan in Miami casts the imprisoned father as a patriot who has sacrificed all to battle the evils of Castro. The author's Cuban cousins, aunts, and grandparents can find no mantle too high for the author's imprisoned father.

On the other hand, the Irish in-laws, north in Philadelphia, cast a far more jaundiced eye on Hector Cornillot, seeing him as a man who fathered four children and then easily abandoned them for the more glamorous life of a reckless renegade. A man whose main motivation in committing criminal acts had more to do with avoiding his fatherly duties than being a patriotic fighter. The Irish clan does not hold Hector up high on the mantle but rather suffers his abandonment in poverty, foster care, and the associated ills produced as the author's single mother, Joan, tries desperately to function in a bygone world of harsh sexism without man or money.

The author takes these two diametrically opposed narratives and weaves them together in a unified myth through the eyes of an imaginative and precocious little girl. No contribution, despite the widely varying mythology, is right, wrong, true or deceitful. One cannot help but laugh in glee as this precocious child attempts to reconcile two absurdly different stories each emanating from different cultural universes. It is as if the child is given the illogical mythological ingredients of imprisoned son, revolutionary, louse, father, deadbeat, hero, absent husband and patriot and forced to create a meaningful and understandable sum total - a father she can love.

I began reading Family Sentence thinking I was simply going to get a historical perspective on a wacky journey with two clans (one Irish, one Cuban) as they cope with the loss of their imprisoned family member. Yet, the book is more - it is a wonderful meditation on why we encircle the billion(s) year old bonfire and listen to, and create a collective lore.
4 people found this helpful
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