25 Best Blogs 2009

This blog delivers daily dispatches from one of the few places where it's still dangerous to be a blogger: Cuba. Yoani Sánchez, a 38-year-old Havana webmaster and editor, launched Generacion Y as what she calls "an exercise in cowardice," because it lets her say things she can't say out loud in Cuba. Sánchez documents the prevailing sense of "endophobia" in Cuba — fear of what will happen after Castro's reign ends — as well as the discontent of young Cubans eager for change. There are also oddly wistful reminisces of her youth, like receiving free candy and soda at school thanks to Soviet Union subsidies. Sánchez's own photos accompany many of the entries, which offer a fascinating and brave peek behind the curtain of a still-closed society.

Sample Generación Y post: I wonder when prosperity will stop being seen as counterrevolutionary. Will wanting to live in a house where the wind doesn't tear the roof off stop being, some day, a petty bourgeois weakness?

Entry you'll never see: Another inspiring speech by Fidel today. I am filled with revolutionary fervor!