Miami

By: Joan Didion

Narrated by: Jennifer Van Dyck

It is where Fidel Castro raised money to overthrow Batista and where two generations of Castro's enemies have raised armies to overthrow him, so far without success. It is where the bitter opera of Cuban exile intersects with the cynicism of U.S. foreign policy. It is a city whose skyrocketing murder rate is fueled by the cocaine trade, racial discontent, and an undeclared war on the island 90 miles to the south. As Didion follows Miami's drift into a Third World capital, she also locates its position in the secret history of the Cold War, from the Bay of Pigs to the Reagan doctrine and from the Kennedy assassination to the Watergate break-in.

Miami is not just a portrait of a city, but a masterly study of immigration and exile, passion, hypocrisy, and political violence.

©1987 Joan Didion (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Didion's Miami is a kaleidoscope of impressions, and a litany of violence, intrigue, vengeance, political manipulation, and broken dreams." ( Boston Globe)
"[F]inely tuned." ( The New York Times)
"This remains a masterful polemic." ( Library Journal)

Cleared up a few things for me

I've never really been able to wrap my head around the Cuban ex-pat community in Florida and how they have played into our current political situation. I understand a lot more now.

Miami Past

Any additional comments?

After living in Miami for decades, I decided to read this 1987 book as a flashback because there is now a controversy over whether the East Little Havana district should be preserved or paved over with exclusive condos. I had read two other books by Joan Didion that were extremely engaging. And recently, this book received praise in the Miami New Times (alternative newspaper) as a pretty good depiction of one slice of the city's history.

I was disappointed. I think the book has not stood the test of time. It is just not very interesting for today's reader, especially as it moves into the later chapters that sketch Didion's meetings and observations regarding various local figures. Too many details and names that add up to a lot of unanswered questions and dead ends. It seems to be mostly accurate but, as the New Times review said, Didion did not get everything right. Example of error: implying that the Black Grove, a historic Bahamian settlement, was a collection of public housing units. Didion smelled linkage between Miami Cubans and the Kennedy assassination and other national events but, by her own admission, never really got a handle on what was happening.

The narrator Jennifer Van Dyck has a fine reading voice but made dozens of distracting mispronunciations in English and Spanish.

Havana vanities come to dust in Miami.

"The shadowy missions, the secret fundings, the conspiracies beneath conspiracies, the deniable support by parts of the U.S. government and active discouragement by other parts--all these things have fostered a tensely paranoid style in parts of our own political life, Didion suggests.

Miami is us, and the tangled tales we heard recently of private armies and retired generals fighting their own lucrative wars provide something of a retrospective support for a thesis developed long before the Iran-gate hearings."

- LA Times Review by Richard Eder

The brilliance of this book is Didion's ability to capture the swampyness of the politics of Miami and South Florida, or what Christopher Lehmann-Haupt described as Miami's "murky underwater darkness full of sharks and evil shadows," and use that as a lense into the US policies in Cuba (during the Kennedy years) and Central America (during the Reagan years). The swampy feel, however, was both a plus (atmosphere) and a negative (narrative-flow). This book reminds me of the feeling I got when reading Delillo's Libra or Mailer's Oswald's Tale

This book is a dark, wet narrative of paranoia, government conspiracies, and a nation and city that has lost control of its dark arts. It is still relevant and the paranoia is still rich. I was reading this book and the character of Jack Wheeler sounded interesting. I remember he had been a figure in Rick Atkinson's [book:The Long Gray Line. He advised President Reagan and Both President Bushes on Central America. So, I decided to look him up since, like Zelig, he also played an interesting part in Didion's book. 23 years after Didion's 'Miami' was published and 4 years before I read it, Jack Wheeler was killed while conducting a review of the legal authority to engage in nation-state offensive cyberwarfare. His body was seen by a landfill worker "falling onto a trash heap in the Cherry Island Landfill". Sounds like it could have happened in Miami.

living history

a different look into the parts. Be there as if you were alive back then.

Learned a lot about my own city

Interesting book which educated me about many historical points in the evolution of Miami that I was never aware of. I particularly liked to know that there are 2X Cuban presidents buried in the cemetery on SW. 8th St. Fascinating.

Miami is more than this book

Joan’s view of Miami is through the eyes of the Cuban experience. And that’s it. Miami is much more complex and just focusing on just one ethnicity does the city a disservice. Yes, the Cuban immigration had an influence on the city. But so did WWII. So did the farms, the Mafia, labor unions, and the US Government. No mention of Hollywood’s influence from the Arthur Godfrey Show to Jackie Gleason. The Rat Pack playing the Beach to the African American entertainers who played to white audiences on Miami Beach then played in after hour clubs in Overtown. A community bisected by the National Highway System. None of this was mentioned as if it didn’t exist.