Book Birthdays celebrate one year of a book’s life in tweets, reviews, and more. This month we’re saying Happy First Book Birthday to Operation Pedro Pan: The Migration of Unaccompanied Children from Castro’s Cuba (Potomac Books, October 2022) by John A. Gronbeck-Tedesco.
About the Book:
Operation Pedro Pan explores the undertaking sponsored by the Miami Catholic Diocese, federal and state offices, child welfare agencies, and anti-Castro Cubans to bring more than fourteen thousand unaccompanied children to the United States during the Cold War. Using personal interviews and newly unearthed information, Operation Pedro Pan provides a deeper understanding of how and why the program was devised.
A Word from the Author:
As I reflect on the last year, I am filled with gratitude. This book is the product of seven years of research and writing, so it is extraordinarily satisfying to see it in print and for people to read, discuss, and review it positively. I have been on a whirlwind tour of in-person and virtual talks, from New York City to Miami to Turku, Finland.
Most fulfilling has been hearing from Pedro Pans directly about their experience leaving Cuba as lone children and making their way into the unsettling unknown of the United States. This book was a new kind of project for me because it involves the history of people who continue to shape the memory of this story.
At various venues, I found myself in conversations tied to headlines of today, as thousands of unaccompanied children continue to cross the U.S.-Mexican border. These conversations inspired new writing on what unites and differentiates these generations. Operation Pedro Pan reverberates in the present day, and my work provides a historical perspective that encourages readers to rethink America’s varied engagement with this ongoing crisis.
Reviews:
“Operation Pedro Pan is more than simply the retelling of history. It is the experience of real people, making their way in the unpredictable storm of historic events.” – Shawnna Morris for Cold War Book Reviews
“The memory of Operation Pedro Pan may never be settled. Former Pedro Pan children will continue to record multivalent, multivocal accounts of their experiences. That, too, Gronbeck-Tedesco shows, is not just inevitable, but necessary.” – Michael Bustamante for H-Caribbean
“Operation Pedro Pan was an epic Cold War battle, a distinct moment in U.S. migration history, a child welfare initiative, and one more chapter in the contested histories of Cuba and the United States. This book captures all of this and more. It manages to hold the big picture and intimate family stories in the same frame for an intense and compelling read.” – Karen Dubinsky, author of Babies without Borders: Adoption and Migration across the Americas
“A fascinating but forgotten story about the Cold War, child refugees, and civil rights. This is more than a book about the beginnings of Cuban Miami or a foreign relations alliance between the Catholic Church and the U.S. government; it is also a reminder of the complex origins of our own times. Operation Pedro Pan is a brilliant history by a stellar writer.” – Christopher R. W. Dietrich, author of Oil Revolution: Anticolonial Elites, Sovereign Rights, and the Economic Culture of Decolonization
UNP blog 