Ruth Behar is an anthropologist, writer, poet, and children’s book author. Her honors include a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and recognition as a “Great Immigrant” by the Carnegie Corporation. Ruth frequently visits and writes about her native Cuba and is the author of An Island Called Home: Returning to Jewish Cuba and Traveling Heavy: A Memoir in between Journeys. Her novel for young readers, Lucky Broken Girl, about a bedridden Cuban immigrant girl, won the 2018 Pura Belpré Author Award. Her newest book, a bilingual collection of poetry, Everything I Kept/Todo lo que guardé (Swan Isle Press), is inspired by the writing of Cuban poet Dulce María Loynaz. Moving between the speech and silence of a woman struggling to speak freely, Ruth Behar embarks on a poetic voyage into her own vulnerability and the sacrifices of her exiled ancestors as she tries to understand love, loss, regret, and the things we keep and carry with us. Presented in a beautiful bilingual English-Spanish edition, Everything I Kept/Todo lo que guardé will haunt readers with the cries and whispers which illuminate the human spirit and the spectrum of emotions that make for lives well-remembered.
