Celia Sánchez Manduley

“Sippial’s beautifully written and stunningly intimate biographical portrait of Sánchez helps readers reimagine the Cuban Revolution through a feminist lens.”—American Historical Review

“This gendered biography of Cuban guerrilla and Communist Party leader Celia Sí¡nchez Manduley highlights how Sí¡nchez maneuvered between traditional and nontraditional roles. Using letters from Sí¡nchez, accounts by rebel participants, and interviews with family and friends, Sippial. . . . Explores the mythical memory of Sí¡nchez as Fidel’s companion and Cuba’s mother. . . . This is a well-written biography.”—CHOICE

“An intriguing expedition into the life of a woman who was a significant contributor to the Cuban insurrection and a principal architect of the first two decades of the revolutionary government that followed. . . . A thoughtful biography of an under-examined life.”—International Feminist Journal of Politics

“Terrific. . . . Meet a woman whose saintly image belies a record of accomplishment all the more remarkable for unfolding in a sexist society that regarded the New Woman as the physical, psychological, and sexual helpmeet of the New Man. Revealing the person behind the revered Sanchez image required deft and relentless excavation on Sippial’s part.”—Hispanic American Historical Review

“Sippial’s biography, based on hundreds of interviews, suggests that in the end, [Celia Sánchez Manduley’s] reticence might have been her greatest achievement, the performance that made everything else she accomplished possible.”—Guernica

“This beautifully written biography of Celia Sánchez Manduley—perhaps the Cuban Revolution’s least recognized and most important leader—is both a brilliant piece of scholarship and an engrossing story that brings the woman, time, place, and revolutionary process alive. Those steeped in the revolution and those new to it will better understand why it mattered and will continue to matter.”—Eric Selbin, author of Revolution, Resistance, and Rebellion: The Power of Story

“In this unprecedented critical biography, Sippial opens a window onto the consciousness of Celia Sánchez Manduley, possibly the Cuban Revolution’s staunchest loyalist and one of Fidel Castro’s primary confidantes. Sánchez emerges as a savvy architect of the post-1959 revolutionary regime who attempted to limit its authoritarian contradictions. That Sippial is one of very few to ever gain access to the state’s official historical archive since Sánchez inaugurated it in 1964  alone makes this book mandatory reading for anyone interested in learning how revolutionary Cuba became Communist Cuba in less than two decades." — Lillian Guerra, author of Visions of Power

“A nuanced and sensitively written biography, drawing on exciting new sources, of one of the most important and yet still poorly understood figures of the Cuban Revolution. Celia Sánchez Manduley provides a rich, multilayered account of Sánchez’s life and legacy, while raising important questions about feminist biography and the politics of memory.”—Michelle Chase, author of Revolution within the Revolution

“I congratulate Tiffany Sippial for her drive, persistence, and assiduous research. Tapping a wealth of primary and secondary sources and her own personal forays in Cuba, she has produced this ambitious and well-written book on an emblematic—and yet very private and enigmatic—Cuban woman of the revolutionary period.”—Jean Stubbs, author of Tobacco on the Periphery