Book review and interview with Rebe Huntman about My Mother in Havana: A Memoir of Magic & Miracle
Rebe Huntman has been on a journey—an outer one and an inner one. Through My Mother in Havana, we get to join her.
A seemingly simple question posed by a passport control clerk in Havana sets the stage for the story of her search: “Why have you come?”
To the clerk, she provides the bare minimum to ensure entrance. To us, through exquisite prose, she reveals the complexities of what has brought her to Cuba—that she has come not only to connect with her deceased mother, but also to bring Huntman face to face with a more expansive version of herself.
Her story reaches back decades to her parents’ 1951 honeymoon in Cuba and to her mother’s 1983 death from cancer in St. Louis and back centuries and across continents to origin tales of the Afro-Cuban gods and rituals that lift the veil between the living and the dead.
Taught to compartmentalize her grief by a college counselor, Huntman, thirty years later, reflects “what I missed most was the missing.” She invites herself to grieve in Cuba, where she finds new ways to connect with her mother through the séances, sacrifices, pilgrimages, and dances that celebrate the West African river goddess Ochún and her Catholic counterpart, Our Lady of Charity.
She discovers competing versions, names, and timelines for these mother saints, who “contain multitudes,” as does Huntman herself: daughter, sister, wife, mother, dancer, writer, student, teacher.
“What you got with Ochún depended on what part of her river you stepped into,” Huntman notes.
During her pilgrimage, which takes Huntman from Havana to the small mountain town of El Cobre, she notices that spaces in homes are less delineated as outside and inside as they are in America. “In Cuba, the outside is not only incorporated into the home; it is central to it.” The same goes for what she experiences there, a place where the outer world fuses with and helps define her inner self.
Huntman structures sections of her book to mirror the recursive nature of how we process key moments in life—the way we return to them over time, allowing new versions of ourselves so we might know ourselves from different perspectives.
A near-drowning experience when riptides pull her ten-year-old self and her mother off the shore of Puerto Angel in Oaxaca, Mexico. Stories of Apolonia, an enslaved Cuban girl who encounters her spiritual mother on a hill in El Cobre, Cuba. Strappy silver heels and Latin dance moves in a St. Louis studio that birth a lifelong love for Latin dance. A father’s demand for perfection. A replica of Winged Victory, “a woman caught between Heaven and Earth,” who is “a woman in pieces, asking us to fill in the gaps.”
With each return to these images and scenes that link the author to her mother, Huntman gains a deeper understanding of herself and of her mother “who had been absent even to herself.”
Inspired by Huntman’s story of her voyage, I’m grateful for the opportunity to ask her about her book and writing process.
The Interview
- Reflecting on the history of Cuba’s capital Santiago, you describe it as a city “left to fend for itself.” How does that relate to how you felt at age nineteen after your mother died?
When my mother died, I felt utterly bereft. Conventional U.S. wisdom suggested I compartmentalize my grief, stop thinking about my mother, and move on. But eventually all that moving on caught up with me. By the 30th anniversary of my mother’s death, I’d become such a master of emotional distance that I could no longer remember the sound of her voice or the feel of her skin. I went to Cuba to find a way back to her through Afro Cuban spiritual practices like Santería and Spiritism that keep the dead close. When my friends in Cuba say they are going to talk to their deceased mother, they don’t say, “I’m going to talk to the spirit of my mother.” They say, “I’m going to talk to my mother,” a custom that traces back to when the Yoruba of southwestern Nigeria buried their ancestors under the floorboards of the house. In Cuba, I discovered that our loved ones never leave us. They are alongside us, guiding and protecting us, whispering in our ear, like an inner voice. I learned that my mother had been with me all along—that it was I who had severed the connection. And that the way back to her was as simple as lighting a candle and speaking her name. This book is an invitation to everyone who longs to connect with their own lost beloved; to know themselves, not as solitary beings making their way alone in the world but as part of a web of ancestors who accompany us at every step of the way. To understand ourselves and the world—like the batá drums that call the gods and ancestors back to Earth—not as static but alive: teeming with the voices of those who’ve come before us and thrumming with miracle.
- Water represents both nourishment and danger. Its amniotic comfort shines in your memories of swimming in the pond with your mother at your family’s farm and through the stories of the night-swimming mermaid in Regla, Cuba. A water goblet assists Madelaine the medium when you ask him to connect with your mother’s spirit. But water also threatens your life and innocence in Oaxaca, Mexico when you were a child searching for bottled water after almost drowning. What does water represent to you now?
Although not all of us use the term sacred to describe our relationship with water, we feel it every time we stand near an ocean or lift a conch shell to our ear. We understand intuitively that this substance which comprises every cell in our bodies is vast and mighty, both life-giving and dangerously unpredictable. In Santería, these dual forces of water are personified within deities like Ochún, the river goddess, and her mother, the sea goddess, Yemayá. Their waters are both sweet and fierce—alternately calm and glassy or raging with currents and riptides. They can be used to heal or to destroy; and they remind us that we too are infinitely wilder and more capacious than we allow ourselves to be.
- Other binaries permeate your story: the nurturing warrior Ochún; the egret and bison that represent you and your husband Rick; the masculine image of a robber with a gun in your father’s painting and your mom’s feminine flower vase; containment and flight; perfectionism and letting go. After engaging with these binaries in your book, what are your thoughts about oppositions? Do you approach new binaries in your life differently?
I was raised in a culture that privileged the conjunction “or” over “and”—not only when it came to life or death, but also when it came to women. A woman could be smart or she could be sexy; she could be powerful or she could be kind; she could be chaste or she could be sexual. But in Cuba I found a way of thinking that led with the conjunction “and” rather than “or.” The spiritual mother in Cuba is a great example of this more ample way of thinking. I met Cubans who celebrated Her in the guise of their Catholic patron saint, Our Lady of Charity. And I met Cubans who celebrated Her in the guise of the sensuous Yoruba river goddess, Ochún. What interested me most, however, were those Cubans who syncretized the two mothers as if they were cut from the same cloth. Each year on September 8, tens of thousands of Cubans make the pilgrimage to the mountain town of El Cobre to pay tribute to Our Lady of Charity. The Catholics among them carry rosaries, while those who devote themselves to Santería wear the white cloth and beaded elekes that identify them as devotees of Ochún. All bring offerings of sunflowers, the most ubiquitous symbol that ties Our Lady with Ochún. In my experience, I had never seen such a nuanced devotion: one in which a mother could be both a Virgin and a fertility goddess. A Catholic icon and an African spirit. And it was this many-layered devotion that set me on my pilgrimage to Cuba: to find a version of myself who could be both grieving and joyful, sweet and strong, broken and whole. And a version of my mother who could be both dead and alive, flesh and spirit, forgotten and waiting for me to acknowledge her.
- Names matter—given names, professional names, nicknames—for you and for many of the people and deities depicted in this book. How do changing names relate to changing identity?
I share in the book that I’ve reinvented myself many times: from daughter to mother; dancer to writer; Congregationalist to Buddhist to Ochún devotee. With many of these reinventions, I’ve taken a new name. And why not? We can look at Ochún, the river goddess who splits herself into a thousand tributaries, each offering up a different facet through which we might know her. There is Ochún Yeye Moró, the flirtatious one who loves to dance, and Ochún Ololodí, the deaf mermaid who doesn’t dance but owns the sixteen caracoles that divine the will of the gods. There is Ochún Niwe, who lives in the jungle. And Ochún Ibú Akuaro, who lives between river and sea and whose domain encompasses both fresh- and saltwater, just as her own identity can switch and change. Ochún appears as Ochún Sekese, the serious one, and as Ochún Aña, the one who plays the drums. As Ochún Funké, the wise one. And as Ibú Kolé, the vulture who delivers messages to and from the gods and is the leader of the powerful women known as the àjé. She is both the giver and taker of life: the amniotic waters that cradle us before we are born, and the treacherous currents that wait for us at every twist and bend of our lives. And in each of these guises, she reminds us that we too are boundless, too complex and far-reaching to be pinned down to any single name or identity.
- In describing adire, a cloth tie-dye method famous in Ochún’s Nigerian town of Osogbo, you share that “the parts we don’t see—what is concealed from the dye—are crucial to what we eventually see.” Without giving too much away to your future readers, what previously invisible parts of your life and story—moments whose significance you may not have realized until you wrote this book—are crucial to what you see now?
I can’t help but think about the writing process itself. You start out not knowing where you’re headed and hope that the story you’re scratching after is there waiting for you. You follow a thread, some question that rises from the sea of possible questions. It grabs hold of you and doesn’t let go. The first question that grabbed me was why, at age 50—thirty years after I’d lost my mother—I missed her more than ever. Was there something to the mother that transcended our biological version of her? A spiritual, maternal energy we might connect with? I’d been raised in a culture that offered little in the way of powerful feminine role models. We were surrounded by images—pop icons and underwear models, feminists and porn stars, soccer moms and saints—all of them flashing large but pointing in different directions. But hidden within each of those slivers of identity was a key to what I was looking for: a spiritual mother inclusive enough to hold all I needed her to be. Centuries of patriarchy have taught us to fear or dismiss the feminine, so much so that even those of us who yearn for her mistrust our instinctual desire for her. But in places like Cuba, the feminine is revered and celebrated and many faceted. She is the voice of reassurance whispering in our ear; the guide who answers our deepest questions and anxieties: Who am I? Am I part of something larger than my own life? And if so, how do I fit within it?
- As part of your father’s desire for his family to appear perfect, he says phrases such as: “Control yourself,” “Stop being hysterical,” and “What will the neighbors think?” You also share your own struggles with perfectionism as a young adult, something you’ve since overcome. What guidance do you have for others who want to get past childhood conditioning as you have?
I’ve spent most of my life pursuing perfection—as a young girl and then a woman navigating what it means to be both successful and lovable. My father had impossible lists of what a woman should be: she needed to be thin, but not too thin. An independent thinker who could discuss world politics, but from a liberal perspective, and always without interrupting. She had her own career but was also a great housewife. “Control yourself,” I heard my father tell my mother whenever her behavior fell outside these rigid ideals, and his voice joined a chorus of others that urged my young self toward perfectionism. I don’t know if I’ll ever entirely banish the many voices of perfectionism that have taken up residence inside me, but I’m making progress. For years I held perfectionism as my ultimate goal, but I’m understanding it for what it is: a flattening of the very qualities that make us who we are; an antithesis to life and all the joys we might experience when we express ourselves authentically. Ochún has been a great teacher, for she insists on being present and attentive—not to another’s ideals—but to her own self. She teaches us that we are beautiful not because we measure up to someone else’s ideas of beauty, but because we measure up to our own. Because we remember—as Ochún does—to revel in our own way of moving through the world, to fulfill the promise of who and what only we can be.
- Your research for and writing of the book at times become part of the book. The reader sees you in an Ohio library as you learn about Ochún beside a replica of Winged Victory depicting the goddess of Nike. You describe the homemade journal in which you take notes, and you share how autocorrect in Microsoft Word changed words for Cuban gods and goddesses, prompting you to “fight to spell them back into existence.” Tell me about your choice to include these “behind the scenes” components.
I never want to come off as didactic or proselytizing, and the truth is that the journey I took to answer the questions in this book is more interesting and life-giving than the answers themselves. By grounding my reader in how I arrive at each step of my pilgrimage, my hope is that they’ll feel like they are riding on my shoulders, experiencing every hope and doubt and frustration as together we test this veil between the living and the dead, the material world and the world of magic & miracle. I want this to be a book that does not end on the last page but opens the door for readers to travel on and on toward their most cherished and far-reaching curiosities and enquiries, with each question birthing new and deeper questions.
- You’ve had essays and poems published in literary journals such as The Southern Review, CRAFT Literary, The Missouri Review, Ninth Letter, and The Pinch. How did writing those pieces inform your writing process for your first memoir?
My training as a poet and lyric essayist definitely informs the writing of this book. I’m drawn to the physicality of language: the way it moves, like the body in dance, allowing us to capture the way the world comes at us as more than one thing. It is this in-betweenness that drives the narrator as she moves between the worlds of Ohio and Cuba, between the spiritual practices of Santería and Folk Catholicism and Spiritism, and between the stories of her biological mother and the stories of the archetypal mothers Our Lady of Charity and Ochún. And so, while My Mother in Havana follows a clearly defined narrative that traces my 30-day pilgrimage to Cuba, I needed to lean on my skills as a lyricist in order to capture the way a story about a woman’s search for her mother in Cuba might intersect with larger questions around grief and loss, both personal and cultural. Because, yes, this is a book about a woman’s search for her mother, but it is also an examination of why I needed to leave my own country in order to find her. It is an interrogation of why the mother has been lost—not just to one grieving daughter—but to a broader culture that has pushed her to the margins. It is an excavation of the sacred feminine as viewed through the spiritual mothers of Cuba; and it is an inquiry into how we might resurrect her, no matter where we live.
- In this book, you share that you “have a history of jumping from interest to interest.” What inspired you to keep going with this memoir for the seven years it took to write it?
Perhaps one of the reasons I jump easily from interest to interest is that I’m always in search of the one that will challenge me to rethink my understanding of myself and the world. It took seven years to follow the multiple threads of inquiry that started me on this pilgrimage. I returned numerous times to Cuba to explore archives, deepen my initiation into the Afro-Cuban dances and religions that lie at the heart of the book, and take part in the annual pilgrimages to Our Lady of Charity’s sanctuary in El Cobre. Along the way, I forged deep friendships with Cuban scholars and artists, writers and spiritual practitioners. In 2017, I was invited to present my manuscript at Santiago de Cuba’s International Colloquium on Popular Religions, where I received feedback from leading Afro Cuban scholars, and in 2018 my husband Rick and I were married on a friend’s farm outside El Cobre. This Spring I will return with books in hand to leave at the feet of the patron saint who inspired this quest, and to share with Cuban friends I now call família. With each return, I bring a more integrated version of myself, hungry to find ever-nuanced answers to the questions that started me on the path of this book. And so, while it took me seven years to write this book, I believe the book will be working on me for decades to come.
- Early in the book, you share that you are “looking for a way back to your mother” thirty years after her death. How would the story have differed if you’d written it soon after your mother passed, back when you were in college? How did writing this book affect your grieving process?
I tried to write about my mother after she died, but I was too close to my grief and all I could do was bleed (psychically and emotionally) all over the page. Still, those early writings were therapeutic in the way that writing in a diary is therapeutic. And while they could not be considered art, I wish I’d written more. I wish I’d written down the exact shade of lipstick she wore and the names of flowers she planted in her garden. I wish I’d written down her pet names and favorite words and phrases, the movies and songs she liked best. I wish I’d recreated every conversation. Because these are the things I’ve lost with time. Paradoxically, it was my forgetting that prompted the biggest questions for this book: If we have all but forgotten the lost beloved—the precise tenor of their laugh, the temperature of their skin—then what is it that we are missing? And how can we connect with that? We need distance from our grief in order to tackle those kinds of big questions. And that is what I’ve gained over time: the ability to shape those bits that remain of my mother into a narrative that I hope will offer, both to myself and to my reader, understanding and healing.
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Jenny Patton, a Pushcart nominee, has had work published in Iron Horse Literary Review, Brevity, River Teeth online, Kaleidoscope, Prism Review, and elsewhere. Two of her essays have been cited as Notable in Best American Essays. She served as a Peter Taylor Fellow at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, received a scholarship to the New York Summer Writers Institute, received an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council, and holds an MFA from Ohio State University, where she teaches writing.