I am almost always enchanted by exile and expatriate memoirs of Cuba—from Renaldo Arenas’s Before Night Falls (made into a great film by Julian Schnabel) to Alma Guillermoprieto’s Dancing With Cuba to Carlos Gensemer’s Snowing in Havana to poet Heberto Padilla’s tortured and melancholy tale. Carlos Acosta, a world-class ballet dancer, recounts his origins as a Havana barrio kid, son of a truck driver. His youthful ambition was to become a soccer star but his truancy and willfulness caused his father to enroll him in ballet school—where he excelled. To dance aficionados the rest is known; now it’s available to you.