“I Have Actually Thrown Punches at Cubans”

Sue Wilson went to Cuba to research her dissertation on contemporary Cuban foodways. “It took me about six months to figure out the following: There are things to be said about Cuba. There are things to be said about food,” she writes. “There is nothing to be said about food in Cuba.” Instead of calling it a wash and coming home, however, she stayed in Cuba. It’s now been 11 months. This week, Wilson has shared some of her day-to-day life in Havana via a diary in Slate. It’s full of strange, sobering and, sometimes, insightful anecdotes, such as when she sneaks a peak at the guestbook at a hotel where it’s illegal for Cuban citizens—save the employees—to enter. “One guy from Texas wrote ‘No McDonald’s! No Burger King! Viva Fidel! Viva Che!’—an especially succinct statement of one view of Cuba, that the absence of soul-deadening corporate culture here justifies everything else. I think most Cubans would disagree.”

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