"Cooke introduces a world that somehow makes sense in its lack of reason, as understood by American readers. An excellent taste of Cuba today, without tourist plans or political agenda." (Kirkus)

"Absorbing, touching… wonderful vignettes covering the daily lives of Cubans in which their hopes, dreams, and frustrations are revealed." (Booklist)

"Full of deeply reported stories from her extended trips to Cuba, Cooke's book is noteworthy not just for its timely look at the island during a time of political transition—as Raul consolidated power and Obama took office—but for its focus on what the future holds for the diverse cast of teenagers and twenty-somethings she meets and whose stories she tells." Conde Nast Traveler

"Incomparable." (Time Out New York)

The Other Side of Paradise: Life in the New Cuba has also been called "a tear-through read, full of vitality and compassion" (Deb Olin Unferth), "an intimate, exuberant, poignant account of lives spent waiting for change" (Elisabeth Eaves), "a vivid and sensually detailed portrait of life on a surreal socialist isle in the sun" (Christopher P. Baker), and "a series of vital portraits by [an author] whose sympathy never gets in the way of her search for the elusive truth" (Phillip Lopate). 

It has been excerpted in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Guernica, and the Best American Travel Writing 2014, and covered on NPR's "All Things Considered," PRI's "The World," and PBS' Charlie Rose. 

Available on Amazon, B&N, and Indiebound, and wherever else you like to buy your books. 

Short-form writing on Cuba:

What Fidel Castro Meant to Cuba’s Youth

"For the young, Fidel was a grandparent’s comment that things had been different before, that the seventies and eighties had been better, not like now, with mass enthusiasm exhausted. Fidel was the twentysomething’s cavity filled at the dentist’s—free—and a taste for rice and beans because it was quite literally all he’d eaten as a kid in the years after the U.S.S.R.’s fall." TIME, November 30, 2016.  

Cuba's Imaginary Isolation

The U.S. media insist on using the same tired language to discuss a country that’s been undergoing drastic changes for the last 20 years. New York Daily News, March 23, 2016.

Amid Sweeping Changes, Cuba’s Race Problem Persists

"As Cuba enters a new era of fast and sweeping change, a long-taboo political conversation about race is on the table as never before in art, music, film, and writing; in both official and dissident narratives; and in diverse circles across the socio-economic strata." Al Jazeera America, August 13, 2015.

In a Raúl Castro Era, Young Cubans Have Been Preparing For This Thaw

On how Cubans have been acting as if a thaw was coming ever since Raul Castro and President Obama took their respective offices, for Talking Points Memo, December 2014.

Cuba's internet is awful

On young Cubans' creative run-arounds for internet scarcity, and how that might shade the coming years in Havana, Guardian. 

U.S.-Cuba Policies Are Wasted on the Old

The 2014 FIU Cuba Poll revealed that support for the U.S. trade and travel embargo on Cuba doesn't split along ideological lines, but between the old and young. Al Jazeera America, June 26, 2014

In Cuba, Unequal Reform

Why new tax reforms on the island won't stanch the flow of brilliant young minds from the country. The New York Times, April 2, 2014. 

In Cuban Film and in Real Life, Defecting Tempts the Young

In zombie films and indie hits, on screen, foreshadowed, and then in real life, suddenly. The Atlantic, 2012.