Borderlands

Ada Ferrer on “Keeper of My Kin: Memoir of an Immigrant Daughter”

“I do think that there's a part of me that was always going to write this book.”

Geraldo Cadava

Being reviewed:

Keeper of My Kin Memoir of an Immigrant Daughter

Ada Ferrer

Scribner, 2026

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Today’s guest on Writing Latinos is Ada Ferrer. Her last book Cuba: An American History, won the Pulitzer Prize. Ferrer is out with a new book titled Keeper of My Kin: Memoir of an Immigrant Daughter, published by Scribner. It’s an intimate, devastating, beautifully written account of her family’s migration from Cuba to the United States, and how the Cuban Revolution both broke and made her family. It’s also a meditation on the craft of history itself. Geraldo Cadava reviewed it for The Atlantic. You can read it here: “How Cuban History Broke a Family.” After a long time teaching at NYU, Ferrer recently moved to Princeton, where she teaches history.

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View a transcript of the episode here.