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A Girl like Che Guevara. Teresa Dovalpage. New York: Soho Press, 2004.
A contemporary bildungsroman, A Girl like Che Guevara details the sudden and rather painful growth of a Cuban teenager. Lourdes, the only daughter of a white Scientific Communism professor and a mulatta store clerk, spends three months outside her sheltered Havana home. At a school-in-the-fields camp, in Pinar del Rio, she starts exploring her sexuality and questioning all she has been taught, from religion to politics. Santeria ceremonies and socialist slogans add a Cuban flavor to this poignant coming-ofage tale.
As someone who has written and researched extensively about sex, I find remarkable the way Doval deals with a topic that is still taboo is many Latin American countries, including Mexico and Cuba. Lesbianism is still the "1" word in our culture. There is "El lobo,...