Don't Shake the Spoon Volume 4 Editor Blog Tania Cepero Lopez

Magic at the End of the World

Growing up in La Habana, I felt isolated, disconnected from the rest of the free or as my teachers called it, the capitalist world.  But I also remember how happy I felt when someone from the outside would suddenly visit from Mexico, or Spain, or even the forbidden United States of America. And then I’d ask questions, and questions, and more questions, and I’d feel my hunger for freedom and knowledge subside, but then the outsider would go back to their free, capitalist, consumerist home, and I’d be left waiting for that magic moment of knowledge to reappear in my life.

From left to right: Mami, Tamara (my sister), Papi, and me

When I escaped my home prison-nation in 1998, I was detained for a few days in a free world detention center, and I thought the conditions were excellent--when compared to the living conditions in Cuba, of course. I bit into apples, drank the little cartons of milk, watched cable TV, in English, and watched in amazement comedy shows where hosts made jokes about presidents and politicians. What!? I eventually became a citizen, finished my college degree, and twenty years later somehow found myself sitting in a classroom inside a women’s prison, this time, as a facilitator for Exchange for Change. 

Why would I do this to myself, I wondered? For years, I’ve blamed my friend and colleague, Nick Vagnoni, for inviting me to participate in a letter exchange back before COVID. I often jokingly remind him that it’s all his fault. But truthfully, every single aspect of my life has led to this. I’m now the outsider who brings a taste of freedom, knowledge, and hope to women living in a prison state, but that’s not where the magic lies, not quite. I’ve come to realize that the powerful magic trick is to honor the stories these women write, the poems they compose, the words they make appear on college-ruled sheets of paper with nothing but a Bic black-ink pen for their wand.

I understand how difficult on good days -- and impossible on most days -- it feels to explain what it’s like to live without freedom. But you have free healthcare, I’ve been told. But you have free education, I’ve been reminded. Well, how much is my freedom worth? Would you give up your freedom in exchange for free education and healthcare--that are almost adequate on the best of days, and horrifyingly inadequate on most days? You are not supposed to answer that. It’s a rhetorical question. 

As someone who is interested--okay, obsessed, with exile literature, I’ve also come to understand that, as Edward Said famously wrote, “Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience.” I would add that incarceration, the most universal form of exile, is terrible to experience and almost impossible to write about, especially when the readers have never lived behind iron bars--or curtains. 

And yet this is exactly the magic that the writers featured in this collection have accomplished.

I gravitate to those pieces that capture prison life in ways that make it impossible for us to look away, and perhaps even move us to action, even if that action is simply feeling empathy. Like Paul, I’m in awe of Catherine LaFleur’s ability to paralyze our bodies, as if to ensure that all our energy is funneled into devouring her vivid, honest, and honestly badass prison reports, a combination of Jonathan Swift’s humor and Orwell’s discourse that will make you laugh, cry, and scare the hell out of you in the span of five minutes. Like Paul, I, too, am drawn to pieces that carry both writers and readers up, up, and away from prison walls and into the world of memories, which is why, like Gissell, I too loved Gary Miller’s “Food can Bring Us Together,” which certainly transported me to his parent’s kitchen, and made me smell those childhood cinnamon rolls. Actually, I encourage readers to read this one with a good cup of coffee and the best cinnamon roll they can find. I assure you it will not taste as good as the one in Miller’s story. That one is special. That one is magic.

I was also drawn to Chris McCumsey’s “The Bus of Change” which takes us on a bus ride from snow-covered northern mountains to the other side of the border, to a place that he calls his “home away from home.”  McCumsey’s prose, like Miller’s, captivates and teleports with high tech instruments: pen and paper. 

I guess what I’m trying to say is that these writers prove that illusionists can exist and thrive in the least magical places. And when you read their work, you’ll believe in magic once again.