Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey

Description:

Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR and Kirkus Reviews
Winner of the American Library Association's Pura Belpré Honor
Winner of the Society of Illustrators Gold Medal
Winner of Pop Culture Classroom's Excellence in Graphic Literature Award for Adult Nonfiction

From "America's illustrator in chief" (Fast Company), a stunning graphic memoir of a childhood in Cuba, coming to America on the Mariel boatlift, and a defense of democracy, here and there.

Hailed for his iconic art on the cover of Time and on jumbotrons around the world, Edel Rodriguez is among the most prominent political artists of our age. Now for the first time, he draws his own life, revisiting his childhood in Cuba and his family's passage on the infamous Mariel boatlift.

When Edel was nine, Fidel Castro announced his surprising decision to let 125,000 traitors of the revolution, or "worms," leave the country. The faltering economy and Edel's family's vocal discomfort with government surveillance had made their daily lives on a farm outside Havana precarious, and they secretly planned to leave. But before that happened, a dozen soldiers confiscated their home and property and imprisoned them in a detention center near the port of Mariel, where they were held with dissidents and criminals before being marched to a flotilla that miraculously deposited them, overnight, in Florida.

Through vivid, stirring art, Worm tells a story of a boyhood in the midst of the Cold War, a family's displacement in exile, and their tenacious longing for those they left behind. It also recounts the coming-of-age of an artist and activist, who, witnessing American's turn from democracy to extremism, struggles to differentiate his adoptive country from the dictatorship he fled. Confronting questions of patriotism and the liminal nature of belonging, Edel Rodriguez ultimately celebrates the immigrants, maligned and overlooked, who guard and invigorate American freedom.

Brief description: Edel Rodriguez is a Cuban American artist who has exhibited internationally with shows in New York, Los Angeles, Havana, Berlin, La Paz, Cape Town, Prague, and London. A regular contributor to the New Yorker, the New York Times, and Time magazine, he has created over two hundred magazine and book covers and illustrated several children's books, including Sonia Sotomayor: A Judge Grows in the Bronx, and is the author of Sergio Jumps and Sergio Saves the Game. Rodriguez's artwork is collected by various institutions, including the Smithsonian Institution, and has received numerous awards from the Art Directors Club and the Society of Illustrators. Worm is his first graphic novel. He lives in New Jersey.

Review Quotes:

"Uniquely positioned to comment on autocracies and authoritarianism, Rodriguez reveals his personal fears about the future of the United States, particularly after the Jan. 6 insurrection. He portrays the crowd on the Capitol much like the one in Havana in January 1959 that starts the novel, bringing it full-circle in a striking visual comparison. It's these moments . . . that bump Worm up from good to great."
--Donna Edwards, Associated Press

"Spellbinding."
--The Boston Globe

"Compelling."
--The Guardian

"An ominous journey from Fidel Castro's Cuba to Donald Trump's America . . . Worm is Rodriguez's first book, and it is an accomplished one. He pulls few punches."
--The Art Newspaper

"It's an immigrant's story with sobering lessons for all Americans, and it demands the doc treatment ASAP."
--Town & Country

"A brilliant graphic memoir . . . immediate and dramatic."
--Buzz

"Worm is . . . a harrowing tale of escape executed beautifully, each panel worthy as an independent work of art ready for framing. . . . Rodriguez's work tackles authoritarianism on two fronts: the present, far-right threat facing the U.S. and his experience with the Cuban regime. [These] books lay out the stakes and call on us not to stand on the sidelines as we collectively face an uncertain future."
--New Lines Magazine

"Shocking. Brilliant. Soul-shattering in its terrible beauty. In Worm, Edel Rodriguez rips open a heart-shaped window onto a hate-shaped world. I can't believe he survived it, but am deeply glad he did and was able to tell the tale. This book is so good it will likely be banned in Florida."
--Chip Kidd, author of The Cheese Monkeys

"Exhilarating, immensely powerful, gorgeous, Worm really does open the imagination and sweep you up."
--Philippe Sands, author of East West Street

"Worm has consumed me more than any memoir I've read before, and that is saying a lot. It belongs in the pantheon that Maus built."
--Print Magazine