LOUIS A. PÉREZ Jr.: Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2008.

In Cuba and the American Imagination: Metaphor and the Imperial Ethos, Louis A. Pérez Jr. adds to his impressive oeuvre of work on US-Cuba relations in the twentieth century. With his practiced command over the archival material, Pérez examines the power of metaphor in defining the United States' imperial relationship with Cuba. Through a range of textual and visual sources, Pérez maps out the changing metaphors US actors used to depict "Cuba" from the early nineteenth century through the years following the Cuban revolution. Pérez asserts, "metaphors have consequences" (14), and he aptly argues how US representations of Cuba resulted in policies based on fictions and "figment[s] of their [US actors] own imagination" (23).  Thus, this is not a book about Cuba, but rather it is a book about how North American ideas of Cuba enabled the United States to gain its "sense of self-righteous hubris," and "destiny" as it became an imperial power in the twentieth century (10).

Building on his earlier studies, including The War of 1898 and Becoming Cuban, Pérez continues his engagement with cultural history. Although analyzing images in order to understand the creation of imperial knowledge and power is no longer a new technique, Pérez provides a rich account of the multiplicity of images US actors projected onto Cuba.  His central contribution is not in his theoretical methodology, but rather in his expertise and close analysis of the specific metaphors used to characterize Cuba.

Pérez's book is strongest in his comparison of the dominant US metaphors before and after the US intervention in 1898. Pérez argues that before the US intervened, it represented Cuba as a "ripe fruit" ready to be picked, or alternately as a neighbor, right around the corner, or in this case, across the shore. By defining Cuba as a neighbor, the United States could justify its intervention through the rhetoric of "charity, duty, and responsibility," masking its more self-interested, or fruit-picking motives (33). In turn, Pérez demonstrates how the American media also represented Cuba as a woman begging for aid and help (55, 57, and 59). Again, these visual representations cemented popular beliefs that Cuba and Cubans wanted the United States to intervene in the War of Independence against Spain.

Pérez then examines US representations of Cuba after the war and in the era of US occupation. In these examples, Cuba no longer appeared as a damsel in distress. Instead, the North American media transformed Cubans either into children who had to be taught, or into antagonists who needed to be controlled (87). Pérez artfully notes how learning to ride a bicycle became a symbolic way of representing Cubans working their way to self-government (143-9). The feminine image of Cuba also faded, and North Americans became far more likely to envision "Cuba" as a gang of young boys, troublesome, dirty, and undisciplined. In an exceptionally short time period, North American representations had transformed their "downtrodden neighbors" into a "racialized rabble" (100).

Pérez demonstrates how gender was central to turn of the century metaphors of Cuba. Notably, he analyzes how the masculine Uncle Sam took on feminine roles during the occupation. In one of the book's most provocative sections, he shows how the US male occupiers became nurses, nannies, and housekeepers. While this served to infantilize Cuba, it also "turned established gender roles on their heads" (140). The US media represented Uncle Sam with a broom in his hand, President McKinley and Governor Wood were seen washing young children, and Governor Magoon was depicted in drag, dressed in a full-on apron and dress, pushing a baby buggy (136-40). These images are fascinating inversions of gender and power, and would be worth even further commentary.

For example, it would have been valuable to examine the intersection of racial and sexual discourses emanating from these post-1898 political cartoons in more detail. In some of the images the Cuban "child" was racialized as white and well-dressed, while in others, Cuba is caricatured as decidedly non-white. When was Cuba represented as white? When was Cuba represented as a non-white other? Were there certain historical moments or local incidents post-1899 when Cuba was more likely to be seen through a specific racial lens? And what were readers to think of these intimate inter-racial relationships? Pérez's analysis would have benefited from a more thorough engagement with recent scholarship on race and paternalism as developed by historians such as Paul Kramer and Mary Renda.

This book is heavily weighted toward the first half of the twentieth century, the War of 1898, and its memory. These chapters are compelling and include valuable sections, such as those that address the US occupation and controversies over memorializing the War of 1898 and its veterans. However, there is comparatively little analysis of how metaphors continued to shape US-Cuban relations in the second half of the century. The book moves quickly through the 1930s and 1940s, and designates relatively little space to US representations of the Cuban revolution. While Pérez makes some thoughtful gestures toward the post-1959 period, e.g. Cuba as a cancer (253), Cuba as a prostitute with the Soviets as her new sugar daddy (252), and Fidel Castro as a "madman" (250), these arguments are not as fully developed or fleshed-out as the earlier material.

If anything, North American representations of Cuba fell into even sharper dichotomies after the Cuban revolution.  US politicians and activists could depict revolutionary Cuba as an idyllic and romantic utopia or vilify it as a totalitarian prison. Given Pérez's expertise, the book would have benefited from an even more substantial engagement with North American images in this divisive period. In many ways, it would complement and strengthen his argument that metaphors have revealed far more about US politics than about Cuban political culture.

As the potential for change and dialogue between the United States and Cuba appears viable for the first time in decades, Pérez's study remains prescient. In short, Pérez's argument that metaphors matter and demonstrate hierarchies of power is convincing. Moreover, he concludes with images depicting the US occupation of Iraq that use hauntingly similar tropes, including an Iraqi learning to ride a bicycle (270). Given the power of images, it is worth considering how these nineteenth and early twentieth-century metaphors will be transformed, and to what end, in the twenty-first.

Jana K. Lipman                                                                                Tulane University