First-Year Writing is a required course at Illinois College. Objectives include improving the grammar and structure of student writing through readings and writing prompts that exercise analytical and critical thinking skills. One strategy is to incorporate reading and writing about literature into writing courses. Students gain facility with language by reading works of literature and analyzing style, structure, purpose, and cultural import. This paper discusses a course design for first-year writing that includes Cuban American fiction and Cuban fiction in translation. This technique may be of interest to faculty researching composition, language, pedagogy, or literature and culture