Thoughts Without Cigarettes - A Memoir

From the first Cuban American author to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, this exquisite memoir recounts the people and places that shaped a literary genius; reissued with a new foreword by Junot Díaz

Oscar Hijuelos's bold and impactful novels exploring the immigrant experience established him as a leading voice in Latin American literature. In Thoughts Without Cigarettes, Hijuelos tells his own story for the first time, introducing readers to the colorful characters and indelible memories that inspired his writing across decades.

Set against the bustling backdrop of Manhattan's Morningside Heights, Hijuelos's memoir reveals the fraught circumstances of his upbringing as a child to working-class Cuban immigrants.

Thoughts Without Cigarettes retells Hijuelos's past with vivid and intimate detail—from a long-term stay in the hospital as a child which caused him to forget his mother tongue, to entering the bustling literary community of New York City. Under the mentorship of Susan Sontag and Donald Barthelme, Hijuelos drew inspiration from his Cuban roots in his writing, as exemplified by his best-know novel, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love.


First published in 2011, Thoughts Without Cigarettes remains a moving, human story of loss in its many forms, and proves the power of literature can carry us forward. Fifteen years on, Beacon Press's reissued edition will make Oscar's memoir available to new audiences and generations to come.