MARAVILLA FUI

Biography Publication

272 pg., 7x10in. biography of my abuela, Eva Juana Quiñones Fernández Oldoerp. A culmination of 242 artifacts collected from her house and 11 original essays, inspired by interviews with families members as well as memories from my grandmother’s kitchen table.

Maravilla Fui, or I was wonder in English, follows Eva’s life as she grows up in Cuba, seeks asylum in the United States after political persecution from the Castro regime, and begins a new, wonderous, life.

Read a digital copy

Time: 9 months

Role: Writer, Designer
Advisor: Brett Yasko

Made possible by the Frank Ratchye Further Fund

The book was titled Maravilla Fui, inspired by the poem ‘Aprended Flores en Mi’ by Luis de Góngora, which translates in English to ‘Learn Flowers from Me.’ The book is bilingual, to reflect Eva’s own journey of assimilating to the United States and role as a teacher, but also to reflect the mystery of our own relationship: how can you know someone fully, without knowing their language fluently?

The biography also included 9 biographies of Eva’s family members, all of whom affected by the Cuban diaspora in different ways. What emerged was a greater narrative of the fracture that communism and facism creates in family, in culture, and in people. Stories on the Cuban diaspora often lack an intergenerational perspective, which Eva’s story, spanning almost a century and multiple generations, inherently tells.

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