Everyone Leaves Summary

Words: 743
Pages: 3

Picture the place where you grew up. Interactions with family, neighbors, friends; discussions of politics, interests, aspirations. No one person is stagnant in their. Life people come and go, where they live, all changes and influences them. At its core Everyone Leaves shaped by the world Nieve grew up in and is directly responsible for the people in her life coming and going. In Wendy Guerra's part diary, part novel. Guerra details this growth and influence through her own stories of growing up in a polarized Cuba. Nieve is a young girl struggling to find a meaning in her life. People come into her life before leaving abruptly, changing her into a woman who is vulnerable and weak. In the beginning of Everyone Leaves. Nieve reflects on growing up in Cuba. A polarized country; fighting against who it is and who it is not. In her reflection of Cuba; Nieve states. "To be born in Cuba is to learn to be absent from the world the world in which we live." (2) Nieve believes that Cuba is distant from the world around her. Growing up in Communist Cuba meant the world around Cuba was far from home. The …show more content…
They shape and form her to till very end of the book, creating and effecting the world of Cuba, Nieve inhabits. When a man named Osvaldo, who Nieve believes is her savior leaves. Many realizations shift Nieve once again. Guerra writes "My phone book is full of red ink… my telephone doesn't ring anymore." (210) Nieve once again finds herself pushed aside and forgotten. She results to giving up on hoping that people stay. Her world and the lack of people becomes her. Nieve's few words stand apart though. As they are the words of someone who has learned. "I am in Havana, and I try, try to go forward, a little each day" (254) Nieve's narrative is no longer a victim narrative instead it is of a fighter narrative. Her world was shaped and molded by the people and land around her and because of that she learned to