A Howl to the Heavens: Art in the Life of First- and Second-Generation Cuban Americans

In a recent review of Phillip Roth’s prolific contribution to American Literature, a critic observes about the central character in his most notorious book, that Alexander Portnoy’s onanistic hold to the flesh is literally, in rebellion against the life that is being forced upon him . . . A fiercely comic shtick that is also a howl to the heavens. The same may be said about much of art and, especially, about art as cultivated by first- and second generation immigrants in the United States.