IMAGINE NOT GOING HOME FOR THIRTY-SIX years. Think of never seeing the house where you grew up, never hearing the sounds of the city streets, never feeling the sea breeze on the beach where you spent all your childhood summers. What would you do if you finally got a chance to go back?

When travel restrictions between the United States and Cuba were relaxed in the 1990s, Cuban exile Tony Mendoza answered that question. Taking the tools of his trade -- cameras, notebooks, and an unquenchable curiosity -- he returned in 1996 for a twenty-one-day visit to the country his family left for good in the summer of of 1960, when he was eighteen. From the eighty rolls of film he shot, he here presents over eighty of the most evocative photos accompanied by a beautifully written text that mingles the voices of many Cubans with his own to offer a compelling portrait of a resilient people awaiting the inevitable passing of the socialist system that has failed them.

Of the more than 200 Cubans whom Mendoza met -- ranging from highly trained professionals to party workers to self-employed vendors and prostitutes -- he found five who still support the Castro Revolution. His photographs and interviews bear striking witness to the hardships and inequalities that exist in this workers' "paradise", where the daily struggle to make ends meet on an average income of eight dollars a month has created a longing for change even in formerly ardent revolutionaries.

At the same time, Cuba -- Going Back is an eloquent record of a personal journey back in time and memory that will resonate with viewers and readers both within and beyond the Cuban American community. It belongs on the shelves of anyone who valuesexcellent photography and well-crafted prose.

A graduate of both Yale and Harvard, Tony Mendoza pursued careers in engineering and architecture before settling on photography as art and on a unique style of storytelling that combines photographs and text. He is the autho