“Ivonne Lamazares’s distinguished debut novel is at once a deeply personal and worldly tale . . . a wonderful amalgamation of culture, politics, and love.”
Philadelphia Weekly

“There’s nothing sugary in this bracing tale about a young woman deciding what she owes her country, her family, and herself.”
Entertainment Weekly

“Lamazares shows us a Tanya beating a path through thickets of belonging and alienation, as Santeria and Catholicism, communism and democracy, chastity and sex vie for her loyalty. Even after Tanya and her Mamá reunite, leaving Emanuel behind, for a perilous raft voyage to Florida, Lamazares wisely leaves many questions hanging in this ultimately ambivalent allegory about a mother and daughter who can love only from a distance.”
LA Times

“Lamazares is a gifted writer who pens her words with heart and whose lyrical memory of her homeland translates into a whimsical sense of a place and its people.”
Chicago Tribune

“Lamazares makes the lives and places sing out with poetry on every page and she relates each hardship in a straightforward way that calls out for compassion and never sentimentalizes. These are memorable characters and a top literary voice on Cuba and Cuban emigrees.”
Florida Library Assoc.

“The Sugar Island narrates in a deeply felt way the transformative pain of leaving and of being left behind.”
Cleveland Plain Dealer

“The writing here is understated and evocative, pulling the reader through scenes of sometimes physical but more often emotional degradation and torment. While political, the strength of this novel outstrips mere literate criticism of the Cuban reality. Lamazares is able to use Cuba and its realities to tell a solid story of emerging psychological independence. Tanya is a strong heroine, one with issues to resolve that girls in any political state can understand.”
Kliatt