The challenges and opportunities of exile are a subject that Garcia explores in The Agüero Sisters and one that has played an ongoing role in her own life. Born in Havana, Cuba, on July 4th, 1958, Garcia moved to the U.S. with her parents when she was two years old. Growing up in New York with a younger sister and brother, she recalls having been raised in mostly Jewish neighborhoods, where few Latinos lived. Her parents worked in a drug store and a card shop, and later owned a restaurant in Brooklyn, where Garcia herself sometimes worked. Garcia spoke "kitchen Spanish" at home and told an interviewer for Newsday that even now her Spanish vocabulary isn't broad and probably makes her "sound like a twelve-year-old." As a teenager, Garcia and her younger sister were sent to Switzerland to study French during summer vacations. She attended...