Historian and Pulitzer Prize winner, Ada Ferrer, has spent her career exploring history, identity, and memory.

In her new book, Keeper of My Kinn, she turns inward, tracing her own family story across generations while examining the larger forces that shaped Cuba and the U.S. alike.

I recently spoke with her about her family history and the stories that families choose

to carry forward. Ada Ferrer, welcome to the News Hour. Well, it's great to be here, Jeff.

This book begins with this image you paint of your mother holding you in her arms as she leaves

Cuba. This was in 1963. But she also leaves behind your brother, Polly.

And you write that your mother told and retold this migration story for decades,

but she omitted that central fact.

Why do you think silence became such a key factor in your family history?

Yeah.

Well, it's strange.

My mother was a storyteller.

She'd love telling stories, and she would repeat them over and over again.

So the story of our leaving Cuba is, you know, the way I tell it in the book, the struggle

at the airport, her heels, me and her arms weighing her down, you know, the person in Mexico who helped us arriving in the

Freedom Tower, it goes on and on. And yet in that narration, he was never there. On some level,

it makes no sense because my brother, Boli, was never a secret. He was always a part of our life.

You know, my mother used to send him presents.

She used to read me his letters.

I used to kiss his picture.

You know, he was always there as an absence.

So it really made no sense for her to leave him out of the story.

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