About the Author

Armando González-Pérez received his doctorate from Michigan State University. He is an Emeritus Professor at Marquette University, where he taught for many years in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures. He has published a number of essential works in the field of Afro-Hispanic research, including many articles and the following books: An Essential Anthology of Afro-American Poetry; Critical Approaches to Afro-Cuban Literature; Afro-Cuban Theater of the Diaspora; Feminine Voices in Contemporary Afro-Cuban Poetry. He recently published an inspiring and heartwarming story of a golden retriever in search of love: Chance: From Turkey with Love.

Reviews

"Stolen Dreams is a great storyline and well written. The [dialogue/interaction] between the characters is awesome and makes a better reading experience. A wonderful narrative. A recommended read." Chris W. Weston, author of A Baseball Man.
"A gripping story of life under the brutal regimes of Batista and Castro's Cuba, told with the authenticity of one with firsthand experience of what it was like. Highly Recommended." Michael Bright, English Professor / Emeritus Professor at Eastern Kentucky University. Author of Cities Built to Music.
"A lively and flowing narrative for the wider public about the final days of Fulgencio Batista's dictatorship in Cuba and the radical change that took place on the island in January 1959. The book describes in a testimonial tone and with abundant fictional notes the tense social situation of that time from the perspective of a family of rural owners, descendants of Spanish immigrants. This fine narrative written by Armando González-Pérez is ideologically in tune with other works about the time in which disenchantment becomes evident with the revolutionary changes whose authoritarianism and excesses triggered a dramatic and endless exodus, especially toward the United States." Armando Chávez-Rivera, Professor of Spanish American literature and culture, University of Houston-Victoria. Member of the North American Academy of the Spanish Language. Author of Dictionary of Provincialisms of the Island of Cuba.
"In Stolen Dreams, Armando González-Pérez strives to document pre- and post-revolutionary circumstances that brought forth disenchantment for many, as well as the still ongoing volition to migrate. By making his protagonist a promising baseball player, he introduces in the narrative a religious (tone) of sorts, since for countless islanders the sport supersedes the day-to-day, transporting them into a world of make-believe. Into a quasi-Neverland. Unlike, for instance, poet Luis Lorente, who in his '1968' explains that 'his passion, baseball, ' gave way to urgency at a time when 'from one day to the next, the stadium awakened transformed into huge cow pastures: firing ranges and training fields for members of the national militia, ' González-Pérez´s hero never gives up on his quest. Intent on pursuing it in the United States, he takes to the sea with other dreamers, only to encounter death in the Gulf of Mexico."González-Pérez´s narrative portrays emphatically a historical moment defined by anguish, desperation, disillusionment and impotence to encounter societal transformation that propelled thousands of Cubans to pursue freedom in other shores. In this sense, Stolen Dreams is at once a work of fiction and an accurate depiction of a dramatic period. The saga´s tragic outcome, somewhat modulated by the survival of a single individual who lives to tell the tale, underscores appropriately the authorial objective to promote pathos and hence induce empathy for his characters and their ... destiny." Jorge Febles, Professor of Spanish American literature and culture. Emeritus Professor at Western Michigan University and Northern Florida University. Author of Revisiones: Lecturas heterogéneas de textos Cubanos.