Thoughts without Cigarettes

A beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist turns his pen to the real people and places that have influenced his life and literature.  A comprehensive look into the mind of a writer.

Born in Manhattan’s Morningside Heights to Cuban immigrants in 1951, Oscar Hijuelos introduces readers to the colorful circumstances of his upbringing. The son of a Cuban hotel worker and exuberant poetry-writing mother, his story, played out against the backdrop of a working-class neighborhood, takes …