@article{434753,
      author = {Hijuelos, Oscar.},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/434753},
      title = {Thoughts without cigarettes : a memoir /},
      publisher = {Gotham Books,},
      abstract = {In his first work of nonfiction, the author writes about  the people and places that inspired his previous novels.  Born in Manhattan's Morningside Heights to Cuban immigrants  in 1951, he introduces readers to the colorful  circumstances of his upbringing. The son of a Cuban hotel  worker and exuberant poetry-writing mother, his story,  played out against the backdrop of an often-prejudiced  working class neighborhood, takes on an even richer  dimension when his relationship to his family and culture  changes forever. During a sojourn in pre-Castro Cuba with  his mother, he catches a disease that sends him into a  Dickensian home for terminally ill children. The yearlong  stay estranges him from the very language and people he had  so loved. With a cast of characters whose stories are both  funny and tragic, this work follows the author's subsequent  quest for his true identity into adulthood, through college  and beyond, a mystery whose resolution he eventually  discovers hidden away in the trappings of his  fiction.--From publisher description.},
      recid = {434753},
      pages = {xiv, 367 p. :},
      address = {New York :},
      year = {2011},
}