Through Each Other’s Eyes

Chess Piece: The Elián González Story

In the final episode this season, Peniley reflects on the throughline of the Elián story: family separation.

In an extended interview with Cuban American historian Ada Ferrer, we share her family’s story of separation and reunification. Her mom left Cuba when she was pregnant with Ada in 1963, soon after the revolution. They left behind her 9-year old brother, Poly, or Hipólito, playing in the yard without telling him they wouldn’t be returning. She tells us how years later he would eventually come to the U.S. too, and be reunited, but that the wound of abandonment would prove deep.

To read Ada's family story, here is her New Yorker article, My Brother's Keeper.

This season's cover art by Ranfis Suárez Ramos.

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