*There will be discussion on the following topics: The Soviet Union, racism, colorism, immigration struggles, employment discrimination, threats, and racial bias. The names used are fictional in order to protect the identities of the individuals mentioned.
By: Drusilla Ugolini
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— CHAPTER 1 : ORIGINS
Havana, Cuba. 1985. Portrait of Mari. 12 Years Old.
1973, Havana Cuba. The young girl in the image above—my mother—was a child of the Quinquenio Gris, a period of immense cultural censorship. “Gris” in other words means grey. Mediocre, monotone, mourning for creative freedom.
This was a period marked by the decline of individualism. The government deeply aligned itself with the USSR due to growing dependence and influence in order to conform to the ideological expectations. Cubans began to drive Lada cars, watched infamous Soviet cartoons, and learning the Cyrillic alphabet had become a requirement in education.
The concept of pioneers, inspired by communism, was also introduced into the educational system. The Pioneers was a children’s political organization. It was a way to monitor political loyalty and track students. To receive the best opportunities in life, one would strive to be a “Model Pioneer.” Excelling in the hard sciences, my mother eventually received an esteemed offer to study medicine in Moscow. She refused. Once a Republic, Cuba has become, to this day, a socialist, communist island.
Everything had become essentially grey; functionality and political loyalty were prioritized, and the colorful soul of the island was systematically “bleached” of its spirit by the USSR. Part of this bleaching included an official declaration that racism had been solved—a claim that effectively made it taboo to discuss Black identity. Cubanidad was promoted and still remains ingrained in the youth today. “To be Cuban is to be more than white, more than black.” You were simply Cuban. Racial prejudice was counter-revolutionary and perceived as a stagnating belief after the widespread desegregation in the 1960s. By labeling racial struggle as a relic of the past, the state attempted to disregard Afro-Cuban roots in favor of a “colorblind” identity.
Grey.
If you were too different from this collective expectation—through your self-expression, hair, or attire—you were scrutinized under a policy known as Parametración. My mother, as a young girl, had to navigate a world that taught her to remain silent about the skin she lived in. Despite the uniformity and lack of individualism at the time, my mother chose to wear her hair freely. Her soft Afro stands as an elegant crown, professing a proud testament of being a colored girl. It was an act of visibility.
☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆— CHAPTER 2 : HISTORICAL CONTEXT - THE CUBAN TRAUMA
Havana, Cuba. 2023. Hospital.
The USSR left its mark on Cuba, and that mark is ruin & decay. Decades of underfunding and the collapse of the Soviet umbilical cord have left the island’s infrastructure rotting away. In these hospitals, the once rigid, monotone hope of Grey has turned to desertion and absolute dust.
You see it in the wooden doors, chipped and weathered, where room numbers aren't professionally engraved but are scrawled in pen—a desperate, human attempt to create order in a crumbling system. These wards often operate in the dark, stripped of the very electricity and light that a modern medical powerhouse is supposed to provide. Even when I walked down these very passages to visit my ill grandmother, I felt as if I was in a horror movie.
Yet, within this rot, there is a jarring, inexplicable passion.
These doctors, earning a staggering $15 a month, work in conditions that would be considered a crisis anywhere else. They operate with almost no material gain, fueled by a vocation that transcends the poverty of their surroundings. It was these underpaid professionals—working in the shadows of a fallen empire—who cured my grandmother of a sudden blindness.
There is a profound irony here: the state attempted to “bleach” the island’s soul and prioritize political loyalty over the individual, yet it is the individual's dedication that keeps the country alive today. Cubans are the soul and heart of Cuba, fighting to this day to stay alive and live in their own country. The USSR promised a utopia and delivered a landscape of ruin, but it could never quite extinguish the light of the people who still choose to hope and fight.
Mari is frustrated beyond explanation at how her beloved country has become. Her anger towards the corrupt government, yet adoration for Cuba itself, is a living testament to the intergenerational trauma all Cubans have undergone. For her, and for many in the diaspora, the ruin of Cuba’s infrastructure is the physical evidence of a failed ideology. This history has forged a unique political psychology.
Typically, Cuban-Americans carry a deep-seated fear of the “construction of communism” that makes many Cubans wary of anything resembling socialist beliefs. Fidel Castro, when he rose to power, used the term “democracy” to describe restoration; however, it turned into a communist dictatorship that left many Cubans traumatized. As a result, Cuban immigrants don't view democracy as a static shield; they see it as a fragile gate that, if opened too wide to socialist ideals, will inevitably usher in the same Red Ghost that ruined their homeland. Communism.
Alternatively, they look to the Republican Party as a rampart while democracy is a fragile barrier that could easily give way to the totalizing systems they escaped. To them, the policy isn't a theory—it’s the difference between a hospital with light and the dark, damp passages of Havana where doctors must heal with nothing but passion and a ballpoint pen.
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— CHAPTER 3 : TRAVELING ROMANCE AS A BLACK WOMAN.
Tenerife, Spain. 1995. Mari & Giuseppe.
This photograph captures a moment of sun-drenched warmth, a year before their wedding: Mari and Giuseppe.
Their story began not in Europe, but in a Havana nightclub. My mother had gone out with money her own mother gave her, but in communist Cuba, women were not permitted to enter such venues alone; they had to be in pairs. Giuseppe was standing outside, and after noticing her and complimenting her braids, he offered to enter with her.
They spent the night dancing, and from that day on, they were never apart. Inseparable. Giuseppe was captivated; even after returning to Italy, he would travel back to Cuba every 15 to 20 days just to see her. He showered her with gifts as symbols of devotion, but in Cuba, even love is subject to the island's instability. While Mari was at the beach one day, a robber entered her home and stole every gift Giuseppe had sent. It was a violation that served as a catalyst; soon after, Giuseppe arranged for her to travel abroad on a vacation visa.
Nine months later, on May 3, 1996, they married in Italy. Life with Giuseppe was a whirlwind of movement to places she had once only dreamed of: the white sands of the Seychelles, the landscapes of Cape Verde, and across the Caribbean to Puerto Rico, Aruba, and Curaçao. They eventually lived together in the Canary Islands of Spain.
Yet, Mari was often met with the suffocating weight of the European gaze. While walking along the coast in Spain, Mari was met with stares from German men so indiscreet they felt like an assault. Giuseppe was often more offended than she was, exclaiming that her character far outshone those who viewed her as a spectacle. He would defend her and confront these people. Over time, Mari realized as she began learning Giuseppe’s mother tongue that as a trilingual colored woman speaking Spanish and Italian, the way people perceived her shifted the moment she spoke. Once they recognized her as a respectable, intellectual, and well-mannered woman, the coldness of being viewed as an “alien” began to thaw into near equality.
Afterwards, the move to Italy brought a deeper, more structural suffering. Initially, it was a dream. After having given birth to her sole daughter, though, her daily life in Italy was marked by a fatiguing search for dignity. Despite her medical expertise, she found that doors remained closed to her. She applied everywhere; people knew exactly who she was and what she was capable of, yet they never offered her a job.
She is certain to this day that this exclusion was due to her race.
The only light in this period was an elderly Italian neighbor they called Mamita. In a country that often looked at Mari like an alien, Mamita would walk with her from place to place, physically accompanying her to help her look for work. Mamita saw Mari’s spirit so clearly that she even expressed a wish for her own son to marry a beautiful woman of color just like her.
Despite this individual kindness, the economic reality in Italy became a pressing issue that could not be ignored. Eventually, the inability to find work forced a final, difficult choice after struggles with Giuseppe that she does not wish to disclose. She was going to America.
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— CHAPTER 4 : MIGRATION AS SURVIVAL, NOT CHOICE
The history of the “American Dream” is often sanitized as a series of voluntary arrivals, but for many, the foundation of this country was built on migration as a desperate act of survival. A century ago, waves of immigrants arrived in search of better opportunities, fleeing famine and industrial upheaval in the steerage of massive ships. Today, that same desperation manifests in the Florida Straits. For decades, Cubans have attempted to escape the island on precarious, homemade boats—balsas—risking their lives to flee the crushing poverty and political suffocation of communism. This modern exodus is a direct echo of the immigrant struggles of the past.
For Mari, migration was never the romanticized “pursuit of happiness” often depicted in old sitcoms or glossy travel brochures. It was, in its purest form, an act of survival. When she finally landed in the United States in 2012, she was not just moving to a new country; she was entering a complex social landscape that still grapples with the ghosts of the 1950s.
The 1950s are often remembered as a golden age of stability, defined by the Ideal American Family—a breadwinning father and a domestic, polished housewife. However, this “effortless” suburban perfection was a facade that relied heavily on invisible labor. While middle-class white women were encouraged to stay home, women of color were often the ones working inside those homes to make that “luxurious” lifestyle possible for others.
This historical dynamic of the “Double Burden” is a reality I saw reflected in my mother’s first years in America growing up. Despite her medical expertise and trilingual skills, she found herself navigating a landscape that often viewed her through a lens of hyper-scrutiny and utility. She worked as a cleaning lady for a wealthy woman living in a massive, pristine house. There is a deep irony in this: my mother was the physical engineer of someone else’s American Dream. She provided the cleanliness and order that society prizes, yet as a Black Cuban immigrant, she was often excluded from the very status her labor helped maintain.
In the 1950s, women were strictly evaluated on their social behavior and domestic cleanliness. Today, I see a contemporary version of this judgment. Immigrant women like my mother are often valued primarily for their utility—how well they can serve the needs of a more privileged class. Cleaning ladies, bus drivers, and waitresses. By tying the labor struggles of the mid-century to the contemporary reality of domestic work, it becomes clear that the “Ideal Family” was never a self-sustaining unit. It was, and remains, a structure supported by the endurance of women whose stories of survival are rarely told in the mainstream narrative.
Her first formal job in the U.S. was at Sears. While it was a humble start compared to her clinical background, it represented a chance that her time in Europe never offered. In Italy, she faced a structural racism that closed every door, despite people knowing her capabilities. In the U.S., she discovered a different reality: while racism remains a pervasive poison, it is a society where “color doesn’t separate what a person can do.”
She had opportunities now.
She eventually reclaimed her place as a medical assistant, moving from the shadows of a huge house she cleaned for others into a professional role defined by her own merit. Today, she identifies firmly as a Cuban-American. To her, the United States is a great country not because it is perfect, but because it allowed her to reclaim the individualism, freedom, and opportunities that the Grey years of censorship in Havana tried to bleach away. Her journey proves that migration is not a choice made for luxury, but a necessary flight toward a place where one can finally be seen as a whole person.
A Cuban-American.
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— CHAPTER 5 : MY STORY
I was a fractured mirror full of cracks—a nonsensical reflection of two faces and two identities staring back at me. I landed in America when I was too small to remember my own motherland, entering a landscape of motels, the hospitality of friends, and the thin, unsteady support of an inflatable mattress. This was the silent reality of our immigration. In those early days, the world was a collection of strange, unfamiliar sounds—the abrasive rhythm of English to an untrained ear.
I was alone, and I found my only sanctuary in fantastical novels. Reading and writing became my comfort; they taught me the language of this new land while providing a door to escape the reality of it.
In this transition, I lost half of myself. My father’s life was taken from me shortly after we moved. The first years of my life were the last of his, as alcohol took hold and turned a man with familiar eyes into a stranger. I was a small girl clinging to my mother’s legs, turning away from a touch I no longer recognized. I don't remember when it became “normal” that he was gone; I just know that with him went half of my history that was Italian.
America is a place of categories. It demands you pick a side, a group, a box to inhabit. But I never found my group. In high school, I was a ghost in the machine. Afro-American students would pick on me, laughing at my features and telling me to die, only to mock me for not being “Black enough.” I found myself carrying baby pictures of my mother and me like a peace treaty—proof of my heritage, just to buy a moment of tolerance. It never worked. I was too white and too alien.
And with white students, I felt like a specimen under a microscope, being dissected and picked apart. I watched their privilege and their carefree lives from the shadows of a bathroom stall, where I would sit in tears, pressing foundation powder back onto my skin after a long, sweaty day. I was obsessed with looking “white enough.”
Presentable. Always presentable.
Passing was my power. My ability to survive was tied to my ability to camouflage. I have been straightening my unruly curls since I was ten years old—nearly a decade of suppressing the texture of my heritage. Something deeply embedded inside me knows it is “better” this way. In Latin culture, colorism is an abrasive social construct that divides us into castes. They joke that I am “lucky” because I can continue to “lighten” the bloodline, a joke that carries the heavy, historical pain of generations of erasure.
My life has been a journey of picking up fragmented pieces. I have begun to mend the mirror that once showed me only broken parts. Now, each crack is a testament to the journey. I am no longer an it, not a “pig-faced girl,” and certainly not my father’s regrets. I am not “too much” or “too little” of a color.
I am enough. In the reflection, I see a girl with two cultures and a mirror—no longer fractured—that holds them both. I am whole. Italian. Cuban. And, despite the layers of shame and the struggle to belong: American.
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