Yvon Grenier breaks with existing scholarship that takes, in his analysis, an often sympathetic if not uncritical position on the Cuban state's cultural policy. A political scientist by training, Grenier stresses the complicity of individual figures with the state's regulation of culture—that is, how artists, intellectuals, and writers conform to unspoken and shifting limits on freedom of expression to avoid being excluded from the arena of public discourse and losing benefits like state-sanctioned travel abroad and access to international art and literary markets. Based on semi-structured conversations with intellectuals and artists, published interviews, cultural and academic publications, and the content of artistic and literary works, Grenier's book alternates between survey chapters and more detailed case studies.

In his overview of Cuban cultural policy since 1959, the subject of the book's first chapter, Grenier calls for a corrective to dominant narratives that propose distinct periods of “opening” and “closing” within the cultural sphere. Instead, he argues that the regime's regulation of culture shows considerable continuity in its fostering of uncertainty regarding limits on expression and its encouragement of cultural factions and individuals to jockey continually for favor and position. The following chapter outlines Grenier's key formulation of primary and secondary parameters in Cuban public discourse and cultural production. The first parameter denotes unequivocally forbidden topics (critiques of Fidel or Raúl Castro, the acknowledgment of opposition to the regime, and questioning of the notion of a permanent revolution), while the second relates to situational limits, often arbitrary and unpredictable, on what can be expressed and in what contexts.

In the book's third chapter, Grenier turns to the first of his case studies, tracing the trajectory of writer and filmmaker Jesús Díaz, starting with his editorial roles at the cultural magazines El Caimán Barbudo and Pensamiento Crítico in the 1960s and 1970s (both ran afoul of the regime); moving to a consideration of the 14-year delay in the publication of his novel Las iniciales de la tierra (The Initials of the Earth, Duke University Press, 2006); and going on to his public rupture with the Cuban regime in the early 1990s. The book's fourth chapter examines the range of positions adopted by visual artists in relation to the state: José Ángel Toirac Batista and Reynier Leyva Novo tackling Cuban politics in a non-confrontational manner, Alexis Leiva Machado (known as Kcho) taking an openly pro-regime stance, and Tania Bruguera pressuring the secondary parameters of Cuban discourse through politicized performances of free speech.

In the following chapter, Grenier sketches the contours of the contemporary literary field through a study of journalist and crime novelist Leonardo Padura's career. The book's final chapter takes the waning of the discipline of political science in Cuba after the Revolution as an index of the impoverishment of academic and public discourse, focusing on the “gatekeeper” role played by intellectual Rafael Hernández as editor of the journal Temas.

Grenier offers a useful overview of the history of Cuban cultural policy and the trajectories of key cultural actors from the generations that came of age after the evolution. Greater clarity regarding the methodology and broader implications of the study would make its contribution to the field of Cuban studies more trenchant. Although the book's preface invokes Pierre Bourdieu's cultural field theory, the insights it might offer for the Cuban case are not always explicit in the chapters that follow. Furthermore, a more detailed explanation of why the author places some modes of cultural production—independent journalism, online media, and music—beyond the book's scope would be helpful in clarifying its intervention. Of interest to students and scholars of contemporary Cuba and culture under authoritarian regimes, Grenier's book extends debates on Cuban cultural policy that show little sign of losing momentum.