ABSTRACT
The “hometown,”1 the site of one’s introduction into one’s initial culture, into the machinations of the social, the familial, serves not only as the site for cultural instruction through praxis but additionally (and perhaps more profoundly) as a locus for the cognitive and affective production of one’s subjective place. Although in an ever-increasingly mobile society the hometown may be but a transitory locus, the originary site doubtless leaves its imprimatur on all subsequent productions of place for those who have ventured beyond its parameters; indeed, despite his
disjunction from Little Havana, Monteagudo notes that he is “[s]till . . . Cuban by birth, descent and upbringing” and that “Calle Ocho will always be a street of memories that, with the flight of time, becomes increasingly better. Growing up in Little Havana has made me what I am today.”2
