When Fidel Castro opened the Mariel harbor to let Cubans sail for America, Edel Rodriguez and his family took their chance. From the town of El Gabriel to the Mariel port to a rickety shrimping boat bound for Florida, they joined the 1980 boatlift, becoming “worms,” as Castro called the departing Cubans. Years later, Rodriguez told his story in a memoir conceived as a graphic novel, “Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey”. In stunning visual detail, Rodriguez tells of a boyhood in Communist Cuba, of a family’s courage and displacement, and of coming of age as an artist, activist, and American in Miami and New York. As a salute to the Miami Book Fair, this exhibition brings together a large collection of original drawings from Rodriguez’s award-winning book, along with the source material, artifacts and photographs which inspired the author to write and illustrate his story.
