Isabel Mesa-Collins Ed. D.

Isabel, a Cuban American immigrant, has contemplated writing about her familys ordeal while living in Communist Cuba under the Castro regime. It is only after she suffers a sudden heart attack at the age of fifty-five that she realizes she needs to share her story with others who have had similar experiences. As a young girl growing up during turbulent times in her native Cuba, Isabel takes the reader through key events that changed her life and the anguish of persecution in her own country. Later, as an immigrant in the United States in the late sixties, Isabel experiences what it is to leave her beloved country while learning to acclimate to a new culture and learning a second language. In doing so, she experiences bullying, racism, conflict, and hopelessness. Fifty years after her arrival to the United States, the author looks back at her life thats filled with challenges as well as accomplishments. She reflects about her roles as mother, wife, daughter, and her thirty-two-year career as an educator.