Book Review: MY MOTHER IN HAVANA: A MEMOIR OF MAGIC & MIRACLE by Rebe Huntman
- elichvar
- Apr 11
- 7 min read
Updated: 6 hours ago
Rebe Huntman
My Mother in Havana: A Memoir of Magic & Miracle
Monkfish Book Publishing Company / February 2025 / 280 pp / $24.99 Paperback
Reviewed by Becky Jeeves / April 2025
Rebe Huntman’s debut memoir, My Mother in Havana: A Memoir of Magic & Miracle, opens with a question. “What have you come for?” the Spiritist or espiritista cruzado asks. To call on the African and Catholic gods—to speak to the dead—a photograph or object is needed. Something that holds the ache, or spirit of the deceased. But Huntman had arrived in El Cobre, a mountain town on the island of Cuba, hundreds of miles away from her hometown in Ohio, to speak to the spirit of her deceased mother, empty handed. Her mother isn’t Cuban, nor is she buried there. Why, then, does a woman with no Cuban ancestry journey to a foreign land in search of a mother she has already lost?
Majestic in tone, voice, and style, and with its own evocative allure, this deeply esoteric memoir takes readers on a modern-day pilgrimage. From the chilly confines of The Ohio State University, where Huntman reads about the saints, patrons, gods and goddesses of Cuba, to the crumbling streets of Havana, the narrator knows—with a certainty in her chest—what she must do. She must follow the calling and tend to the deepest, most malnourished roots of her soul. She must journey to find a place in her heart called home, and she must immerse herself in the mysteries and traditions of another culture, believing that these customs will bring her safely to the doors of another realm: the spirit world.
My Mother in Havana is a unique and moving exploration of spirituality, self-discovery, and one daughter’s journey back to her mother. It is a story of reunion—one that poses profound questions about identity, womanhood, and motherhood. At its core, Huntman asks: When our own mother is absent, who do we turn to for that elusive, guiding presence we call Mother? Huntman travels to Cuba despite having no ties to the island and its people, other than a lifelong affiliation to dance, Latin ballroom dance being one of the passions she shared with her mother growing up. Readers will be intoxicated by the rich narrative pull of Huntman’s memoir and equally appreciative of the gift she gives us: the privilege of learning about Cuban culture and tradition.
A retired Latin dancer and choreographer, Huntman writes with the same narrative rhythm. Contextualized around memories of her mother from the “boxes of dress patterns, their paper, glossy as onion skin” to the “sacred drums and dancers calling the oricha [divine spirits central to the Yoruba religion] back to earth; my mother’s voice speaking my name,” this remarkable path to healing and renewal will strike a deep chord with anyone who has ever lost a loved one, especially readers curious about the spiritual afterlife.
Thirty years earlier, when her mother lay dying of cancer in a hospital bed in St. Louis, Missouri, after surgeries and chemotherapy to remove the malignancy that had spread through her body, the teenage Huntman couldn’t look. In the hospital room, her gaze fell upon physical things. Her mother’s rings. The telephone next to the hospital bed. She fixated on her mother’s wrists and neck strung with "gold and copper, her fingers with diamonds.” That fragile line between having a mother one day and not having one the next, ripped apart by the “reluctance on my part,” the author reflects, “to look head-on at what was happening.”
Grief-stricken, Huntman kept the memory of mother hidden, unspoken for years. Bereaved and heartbroken, stunned by the loss, Huntman put away the memory box of her mother and kept the lid shut tight in just the same way her mother had kept a box of receipts and notes—painful evidence of her father’s infidelities—hidden away in the bedroom wardrobe. With no "object"—gravesite or urn—to honor her mother, the metaphorical umbilical cord that joins each of us to our origin, the womb, to our mothers, and their mothers before them, remained untethered.
Three decades after her mother’s death, when Huntman is in her fifties attending graduate school in Ohio, her quest takes her back to Havana, the epicenter of Afro-Cuban culture. Remembering the last visit she made to the island ten years earlier, when she was the director of a dance studio in Chicago, Huntman is pulled by the same invisible cord of dance and movement and the mysteriousness of the island’s gods and goddesses. Driven by a yearning to speak to her mother and “witness a devotion to the mother,” she embarks on a monthlong pilgrimage joining the tens of thousands of other pilgrims arriving on the island each year to celebrate at one of Cuba’s most revered Catholic shrines: Our Lady of Charity.
In her treatment of Cuban religions, beliefs, and traditions, Huntman reflects on the patron saint of Catholicism—Our Lady of Charity—and the idolized goddesses of the Santería religion, juxtaposing the role of women in Cuban culture with Western societal norms and the mixed, claustrophobic disparity of female ideals she’d grown up with. “You’re hysterical,” her father shouted when her mother confronted him about his affairs. In Huntman’s childhood and formative years, her mother’s place in the home and her role in marriage mirrored wider societal and cultural norms. It was not the divine female or idolization of the matriarchal woman that epitomized Western culture, but her suppression.
Huntman’s work is layered and thematic. She writes at the serene confluence of feminism and religion, connecting the physical with the spiritual world, observing the many ways women—mothers, sisters, grandmothers—are revered in Cuba. For many Cubans, the African goddesses and Catholic patron saints are a powerful force: strong and courageous, nurturing and sweet. In homes, candles are lit. Statuettes adorn front rooms. Along roadsides, traders sell figurines of Our Lady. All around the author, central to the traditions of Afro-Cuban culture and society, is the embodiment of femininity.
But Catholicism is not the only religion on the island of Cuba where the ancient legends of powerful women are embraced. Moved also by the African river goddess Ochún and her “sensuous beauty,” Huntman gives an unflinching portrayal of her experience with the religion of Santería. “Something about the river goddess felt at home in my body,” she muses. The intimacy and ease of the author’s observations—their truth and sensual immediacy—creates its own narrative fullness. A wonderment and wholeness that lives and breathes on every page.
To connect with the spirit world, to dance the dance of the spirits, or oricha, she must forget choreographed steps. The dance of Ochún is not one to be mimicked the way Huntman had learned to dance the cha-cha-chá in St. Louis growing up or the way her parents had danced ballroom in their heyday at the St. Louis Dance Club. The dance of Ochún is a dance that comes from within.
In the memoir’s vivid moments of music and dance, sacrifice and offerings, religious practices take on different forms. Using an informed, balanced perspective, Huntman tells the stories of the Afro-Cuban gods and goddesses and the patron saint of Cuba, Our Lady of Charity, with clarity and intrigue. She brings to life narratives and stories from the women she encounters in Cuba, now friends, and the real-life priestesses she meets who represent mother figures. Together, these goddesses, central to the religion of Santería and Cuba's patron saint, Our Lady of Charity, are the embodiment of the larger spiritual view of the Mother she seeks.
Though the edges between Catholicism and Santería might, at times, be blurred and hard to decipher, the author maintains narrative focus, rendering the interconnectedness of Catholic and Afro-Cuban cultures, practices and traditions alongside her own spiritual understandings with clarity and perceptiveness. The prose is tender and illuminating.
“Mother. Daughter. Spirit,” she writes: “A most holy trinity.”
While the answers to questions about spirits and the afterlife remain personal, readers will be captivated by the unassuming reverence the writer pays to observing the far-reaching metaphysical realms between Heaven and Earth. Between life and death. We are, she laments “all dying even as we live.”
Transformative in essence, My Mother in Havana bravely sets aside the prejudices and preconceptions of traditional Western belief systems—including those of the writer’s own Midwest values and upbringing—in favor of an exploratory introduction into the religion of Santería. While Huntman considers herself new to the religion, she brings far-reaching insights to the ancient gods and goddesses, saints and patrons, and the real-life priests and priestesses she meets along the way. The symbolic language, reference to beads, shells, copper, honey and sunflowers, and even Huntman’s personal journal and the Lady of Charity pendant she buys, are varied and resonant metaphors.
Returning to the question asked by the Spiritist—“What have you come for?”—Huntman bookends her closing chapters to answer that question. She answers other questions too, ones that might have crossed readers’ minds. On her return to Ohio, as she marks the thirtieth anniversary of her mother’s passing with ceremony: “First the candle to Eleggua, then three for Our Lady and five for Ochún,” some readers might ask what her partner and son think of her pouring fresh water over river stones and the songs she sings, the ones that now form part of her wider belief system and worldview.
There is more to the language and observations in this memoir than one singular answer to what lifting the veil between the living and the dead can reveal; however, the writer succeeds in showing us the possibilities that can flourish when we follow our hearts. With its own purity, smoldering with life, color, and movement, this breathtaking memoir is testament to one woman’s brave and beautiful journey back to her mother—and herself—in the aftermath of loss. Reading Huntman's uplifting and spiritual memoir, even skeptics will feel their spines straighten.
Becky Jeeves was born and raised in England and now resides in California. She is working towards an MA in Writing from the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University. She is a nonfiction writer, currently seeking representation for her debut memoir: The Daughter I Am. Becky’s memoir explores the effects of early parental loss in childhood and what it means for daughters to grow up motherless. When she is not writing, Becky is busy traversing nature and new cities. You can find her at beckyjeeves.com.
