In Cuba Unspun Rosa Jordan introduces readers to Cubans in all walks of life, people whom she has met during travels around the island by bike, bus, plane, train, truck, and car. Familiar places like Havana and Varadero are viewed from unfamiliar angles and serve as starting points for adventures that began in 1996 and continue into the future. Jordan has camped in a military compound, spent a rainy night in the jungle without a tent, cycled through hurricane-devastated coastal towns, run into a friend at a gay pride parade in the capital, picked up hundreds hitchhikers, come face to face with Fidel, and much more. It is a trip through time as well as space, recording changes in Cuba over the past 15 years and offering analyses of Cuban history and its present leadership that holds many surprises.

Originally a freelance journalist, Rosa Jordan has in the past 15 years published nine books: four non-fiction (two set in Cuba), four juvenile fiction (set in the US South), and Far From Botany Bay, her first novel for adults (set in England, Australia, and the South Pacific.) Whatever the form or geography, Jordan’s writings illuminate landscapes where social and political realities intersect with personal courage and compassion. Jordan grew up in the Florida Everglades, attended university in California and Mexico, and emigrated to Canada in 1980. An environmental and social justice activist, she has been on the board of Earthways Foundation almost 20 years. In that capacity, she facilitated the development of an organic agriculture project in the mountains of Guatemala and a jungle cat reserve in Ecuador’s Chocó rainforest. She and her partner Derek Choukalos live, write, ski, and cycle in the Monashee Mountains of British Columbia.

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