Lisandro Pérez is Professor of Latin American and Latina/o Studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He is the author, with Guillermo Grenier, of The Legacy of Exile: Cubans in the United States. He is the author of Sugar, Cigars, and Revolution: The Making of Cuban New York (NYU Press). More than one hundred years before the Cuban Revolution of 1959 sparked an exodus that created today’s prominent Cuban American presence, Cubans were settling in New York City in what became largest community of Latin Americans in the nineteenth-century Northeast. This bookbrings this community to vivid life, tracing its formation and how it was shaped by both the sugar trade and the long struggle for independence from Spain. Historically rich and engrossing, Sugar, Cigars, and Revolution immerses the reader in the riveting drama of Cuban New York. Lisandro Pérez analyzes the major forces that shaped the community, but also tells the stories of individuals and families that made up the fabric of a little-known immigrant world that represents the origins of New York City’s dynamic Latino presence.
