BookBrowse Reviews Say Hello to My Little Friend by Jennine Capó Crucet

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A young Cuban American man and an orca seek their way out of the daily grind in Miami.

Twenty-year-old Ismael Reyes is making a living in Miami as an impersonator of the rapper/singer Pitbull when he receives a cease-and-desist letter from the entertainer's lawyers. In search of a new ambition, Izzy decides to model his future on Tony Montana, the protagonist of the film Scarface, thus moving from one Cuban American cultural touchstone to another. He is squeamish about involving himself in the drug trade, so instead he (along with his friend Rudy, who he has chosen to be his sidekick) pursues a career smuggling migrants into the United States. There is a personal aspect to this shift, as Izzy himself came to America from Cuba at age seven on a raft with his mother, who drowned on the passage. Also, there's a whale who can influence Izzy's thoughts.

Izzy and Rudy bear a certain narrative resemblance to Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, but they are not held up to the reader's gaze for ridicule. Izzy may be a little ridiculous, but he is many other things as well: smart, adaptable, savvy about his circumstances. While we're not quite meant to be laughing at its protagonist, Say Hello to My Little Friend is fortunately still very funny. In addition to the boys, Rudy's sister Julisa, with whom Izzy has a brief romantic relationship, is one of the most delightful and refreshing depictions of a teenage girl in recent memory. She knows her worth — both in her ability to help Izzy advance his career and in her supposed God-given sexual gift which she refers to as "The Sacred Blowjob."

In addition to Don Quixote, the book alludes to Moby Dick via Izzy's (Ismael's!) fascination with the Miami Seaquarium's star attraction, the orca Lolita (whose name, of course, ticks another literary box). The fascination is mutual — Lolita has a psychic connection to Izzy that allows her to sense him from far away, and even affect the way he feels and behaves in small ways. The author winks at this connection, as the narrator asks at one point, "Can a whale and a man fall in love? Of course! There's a whole other book about exactly that," but this element offers more depth than one might expect. Both Lolita and Izzy are claustrophobic, being squeezed out of their environments — for the former, a too-small aquarium tank, for the latter, a Miami that is sinking, flooding, one tsunami or tropical storm away from oblivion. Both were plucked from the sea, albeit under very different circumstances.

Another story begins to emerge as Izzy and Rudy go in search of the shady figures they believe will introduce them to the criminal underworld of migrant smuggling. Izzy contacts those who came over on the raft with him and his mother, Alina. Izzy was raised by his Tia Teresa, who did not have a close relationship with her sister. Alina was a die-hard Castro communist who resented Teresa for fleeing to the US during the Freedom Flights of 1973. Why Alina herself fled 30 years later with her son is an enduring mystery, as are the exact circumstances of her death on the water. While speaking to those who remember the event, Izzy becomes desperate to understand, interrupting and subverting the quest narrative we've been led to expect.

Yet Jennine Capó Crucet also resists the easy narratives of migrant tragedy, personal growth, strength and perseverance in the face of generational trauma. We're told early on that we won't be getting this kind of story, when the narrator refuses to delve into Tia Tere's backstory:

"That story is easier to tell...so much easier to digest...You want that tragic exile story regurgitated for you once more? Look for it elsewhere…Or better yet (but granted far less comfortable for some of you): go for a walk in Hialeah...Order a croqueta and give yourself twenty minutes to find that alcoholic father or that magical abuela type, the ones who'll be dead by story's end because admittedly it's just easier to go that route, to rewarm and rehash some previously perpetuated idea of authentic, over and over and over again. Fish out those narratives from the croqueta frying oil yourself. Because if you're asking, here's the answer: Everybody's dead."

But it's still something of a (wonderful and transgressive) shock when the rugs of these narratives are pulled out from under us one by one, particularly when the author veers into the self-referential, imagining a reader that goads her into adding more Cuban elements: cigars! Buena Vista Social Club! Santeria! "ancestor stuff"!

Say Hello to My Little Friend is so many things — an ode to Cuban Miami, an homage to Moby Dick, a sympathetic portrait of an ambitious but lost youth desperate to succeed in a world that doesn't need his particular skill set, a plea for animal rights. It's also a reckoning with Miami's vulnerability to climate-related disaster. But it isn't a lament. People have bad parents. Men disappoint the women who have high hopes for them. Money and status are hard to come by. Miami is on the verge of destruction. But there is still the beautiful hustle, the imagined come-up just around the corner. And there is Lolita. When the sea rises up to take Miami, its Izzys and Julisas and Pitbulls and Tony Montanas sucked into the rush of the waves, Lolita will return glorious and victorious from whence she came.

This review first ran in the March 20, 2024 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.