Books & Books in Coral Gables will host an evening of conversation and reflection with author Ana Hebra Flaster and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mirta Ojito on Saturday, June 28, at 6 p.m. The event, free and open to the public, marks the release of Flaster’s debut memoir, Property of the Revolution: From a Cuban Barrio to a New Hampshire Mill Town (She Writes Press, $17.99)—a searching, deeply personal account of family, exile, and transformation.

The story begins in a working-class Havana neighborhood, where Hebra Flaster’s parents were once fervent supporters of Fidel Castro’s revolution. But by the late 1960s, disillusionment with the regime’s repression had turned them from loyalists into fugitives. Within forty-eight hours, they lost their home, their country, and their community—arriving as refugees in New Hampshire with little more than hope, memory, and the will to begin again.

That tension—between allegiance and disappointment, between loss and adaptation—is what drives Property of the Revolution, a memoir that blends personal history with political rupture, and intimate memory with cultural analysis. Flaster revisits her childhood in exile not simply to recount it, but to understand it anew.

A Revolution’s Children

Flaster was six years old when her family fled Cuba. What followed was a reinvention rooted in storytelling. Her “viejos,” as she calls her elders, preserved their identity through stories—gritty, proud, often painful remembrances of the Havana barrio they had left behind. That oral history, sustained over dinner tables and radio broadcasts, became a cultural lifeline.

Flaster has spent decades exploring this dual identity. Her essays and commentaries have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and NPR. Her style blends a journalist’s eye with a poet’s cadence—thoughtful, evocative, and unafraid of complexity.

But Property of the Revolution is not only about displacement. It’s about the people who made survival possible: the “women warriors” of her family who navigated exile not as victims but as architects of a new American life. These women, by necessity and by will, transformed their grief into structure—guiding children, rebuilding dignity, and refusing to relinquish joy.

In Conversation with Mirta Ojito

Moderating the discussion is Mirta Ojito, herself no stranger to the terrain of memory and migration. A refugee from Cuba, Ojito is the author of Finding Mañana and Hunting Season, and a forthcoming novel, Deeper than the Ocean. Her work, honored with both a Pulitzer Prize and an Emmy, frequently examines identity, resilience, and the subtle power of place.

Together, Hebra Flaster and Ojito will discuss the legacy of exile, the costs of revolution, and what it means to belong to two countries—and, at times, to neither. For readers of Cuban descent, the conversation may stir recognition. For others, it will offer insight into a distinctively American story: the search for home in unfamiliar places.

A Timely Memoir in a Shifting Landscape

As political and cultural conversations revisit themes of displacement, border crossings, and national identity, Property of the Revolution arrives at a moment of renewed relevance. It does not romanticize the past, nor does it flatten the present into policy or ideology. Instead, it insists on nuance, memory, and the emotional texture of survival.

The event at Books & Books is not just a reading—it’s an invitation to bear witness. For Coral Gables, a city deeply shaped by the Cuban diaspora, the evening promises to be both familiar and revealing.

Event Details

• What: An Evening with Ana Hebra Flaster and Mirta Ojito
• When: Saturday, June 28, 6–7 p.m.
• Where: Books & Books, 265 Aragon Avenue, Coral Gables, FL 33134
• Tickets: Free; books available for purchase at the event
• Book: Property of the Revolution by Ana Hebra Flaster (She Writes Press, $17.99)

For those unable to attend, Property of the Revolution is available now online and in-store. But the opportunity to hear its stories brought to life—in the voice of the woman who lived them—is a singular one.