Zilia L. Laje was born in Vedado, to the west of Havana, on Saturday, February 1st, 1941, an only child, and her father died when she was five. Her paternal grandmother's ancestors had arrived in Cuba in the 1580's. She attended a girls' municipal school. She went with her mother to live in New York in her teens for over five years. In Manhattan, she attended junior high school and took shorthand in English at a business school. They moved back to Havana, where she worked as export documentation clerk in a plate-glass international sales company in Vedado and attended the Vedado Professional S more...
