Literature
Cuban literature is the literature written in Cuba or outside the island by Cubans in the Spanish language. It began to find its voice in the early 19th century. The major works published in Cuba during that time were of an abolitionist character. Notable writers of this genre include Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda and Cirilo Villaverde. Following the abolition of slavery in 1886, the focus of Cuban literature shifted. Dominant themes of independence and freedom were exemplified by José Martí, who led the modernista movement in Latin American literature. Writers such as the poet Nicolás Guillén focused on literature as social protest. Others, including Dulce María Loynaz, José Lezama Lima and Alejo Carpentier, dealt with more personal or universal issues. And a few more, such as Reinaldo Arenas and Guillermo Cabrera Infante, earned international recognition in the postrevolutionary era.
Most recently, there has been a so-called Cuban "boom" among authors born during the 1950s and '60s. Many writers of this younger generation have felt compelled to continue their work in exile due to perceived censorship by the Cuban authorities. Many of them fled abroad during the 1990s. Some well-known names include Daína Chaviano (USA), Zoé Valdés (France), Eliseo Alberto (Mexico), Pedro Juan Gutiérrez (Cuba), Antonio Orlando Rodríguez (Cuba) and Abilio Estévez (Spain).
Cuban literature is one of the most prolific, relevant and influential literatures in Latin America and all the Spanish-speaking world, with renowned writers including José Martí, Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, José María Heredia, Nicolás Guillén (the National Poet of Cuba), José Lezama Lima, Alejo Carpentier (nominee for the Nobel Prize for Literature and previously the Premio Cervantes winner in 1977), Guillermo Cabrera Infante (Premio Cervantes, 1997), Virgilio Piñera and Dulce María Loynaz (Premio Cervantes, 1992), among many others.
Reference
Wikipedia. (2020, July 4). Cuban Literature retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_literature
About Cuba
Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is a country comprising the island of Cuba as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located in the northern Caribbean where the Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean meet.
The territory that is now Cuba was inhabited by the Ciboney Taíno people from the 4th millennium BC until Spanish colonization in the 15th century. From the 15th century, it was a colony of Spain until the Spanish–American War of 1898, when Cuba was occupied by the United States and gained nominal independence as a de facto United States protectorate in 1902. As a fragile republic, in 1940 Cuba attempted to strengthen its democratic system, but mounting political radicalization and social strife culminated in a coup and subsequent dictatorship under Fulgencio Batista in 1952. Open corruption and oppression under Batista's rule led to his ousting in January 1959 by the 26th of July Movement, which afterwards established communist rule under the leadership of Fidel Castro. Since 1965, the state has been governed by the Communist Party of Cuba. The country was a point of contention during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, and a nuclear war nearly broke out during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Cuba is one of a few extant Marxist–Leninist socialist states, where the role of the vanguard Communist Party is enshrined in the Constitution. Independent observers have accused the Cuban government of numerous human rights abuses, including short-term arbitrary imprisonment.
Culturally, Cuba is considered part of Latin America. It is a multiethnic country whose people, culture and customs derive from diverse origins, including the aboriginal Taíno and Ciboney peoples, the long period of Spanish colonialism, the introduction of African slaves and a close relationship with the Soviet Union in the Cold War. From 1962 until 1992, Cuba was officially an atheist Republic, openly and categorically hostile to religion.
Cuba is a sovereign state and a founding member of the United Nations, the G77, the Non-Aligned Movement, the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States, ALBA and Organization of American States. It has currently one of the world's only planned economies, and its economy is dominated by the tourism industry and the exports of skilled labor, sugar, tobacco, and coffee.
Reference
Wikipedia. (2020, July 4). Cuba retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuba
Books
The Chase by Call Number: PQ7389.C263 A6413 1989ISBN: 0374522391Publication Date: 1990-09-01"In a nameless, Havana-like city, an anonymous man flees a team of shadowy, relentless political assassins, and ultimately takes refuge in a symphony auditorium during a performance of Beethoven's Eroica. . . . This nightmarish novel does not so much tell a story as map the secret political infrastructure of cities, governments, churches, music, and bodies." The Independent
Breach of Trust/Abuso de Confianza by ISBN: 9780817358730Publication Date: 2016-07-15Ángel Escobar's Breach of Trust / Abuso de confianza is known by many as the most devastating book of his poetic generation. It is his first to be offered to an English-speaking audience. Merging personal and collective meditations, these twenty-three poems perform an indictment of violence. Escobar's poetry delineates lacerations etched on bodies and minds by the sanguinary twentieth century, which unfolded out of a longer modernity spanning the Americas. Breach of Trust / Abuso de confianza outlived its author, who took his own life in 1997. Brief and implicit appeals for justice and love offset the book's abject theatricality. Escobar's tragic masterpiece deftly interweaves themes into a striking synthesis offered in the spirit of survival. Award-winning translator Kristin Dykstra introduces this collection with a comprehensive examination of Escobar's life, work, and the times within which he wrote. Dykstra situates Escobar's poetic abjection as his drive to confront thingification face to (non)face.
The World As Presence/el Mundo Como Ser by ISBN: 9780817358846Publication Date: 2016-11-29Marcelo Morales was born in Cuba in 1977. He is an established, prize-winning writer, yet he is younger in comparison to most of the Cuban poets known internationally, many of whom were born prior to the 1959 revolution. While older generations of Cuban poets have wrestled in their work with social and political critique, those critiques have often been articulated through formal experimentation and abstraction, unsurprising given the censorship and the real threats of punishment that dissident writers have faced. Morales, however, directly interrogates both the Cuban past and present. References to many significant moments, people, and issues in Cuban history and culture can be found throughout his work. Along with references to the activist group "The White Ladies," the 1976 bombing of Cuban Airlines Flight 455, and the military aid that Cubans provided to Angola during its fight for independence, Morales's poetry follows a timeline ranging from Martí to Guevara to the day of the 2014 announcement by Obama and Castro that diplomatic relations between the two nations would finally be restored. As Cuba experiences a series of historically remarkable transitions, Morales emerges from this context to offer an incisive poetic account of this critical moment in Cuban, as well as world, history. The World as Presence/El mundo como ser is both the debut of this work in any language and the first English translation of a complete Morales collection. Given the bilingual format, this book will be of interest both to English and Spanish readers.
My Havana by ISBN: 9781442615786Publication Date: 2018-07-10For more than thirty years, musician Carlos Varela has been a guide to the heart, soul, and sound of Havana. One of the best known singer-songwriters to emerge out of the Cuban nueva trova movement, Varela has toured in North America, the Caribbean, Latin America, and Europe. In North America, Varela is “Cuba's Bob Dylan.” In Cuba, he is the voice of the generation that came of age in the 1990s and for whom his songs are their generation's anthems. My Havana is a lyrical exploration of Varela's life and work, and of the vibrant musical, literary, and cinematic culture of his generation.Popular both among Cubans on the island and in the diaspora, Varela is legendary for the intense political honesty of lyrics. He is one of the most important musicians in the Cuban scene today. In My Havana, writers living in Canada, Cuba, the United States, and Great Britain use Varela's life and music to explore the history and cultural politics of contemporary Cuba. The book also contains an extended interview with Varela and English translations of the lyrics to all his recorded songs, most of which are appearing in print for the very first time.
Of Such a Nature/Índole by ISBN: 9780817359058Publication Date: 2018-04-03José Kozer is one of the most influential contemporary Cuban poets working today. A key figure in the neobaroque movement within contemporary Latin American poetry, he is one of only three Cubans to ever win the Pablo Neruda Prize given by the Neruda Foundation in Chile. He is the author of close to ninety books, including Este judío de números y letras, Bajo este cien, La garza sin sombras, Carece de causa, and Y del esparto la invariabilidad. Kozer is also noteworthy as a key poet of the Cuban diaspora, having left Cuba in 1960 and residing ever since in the United States. Of Such a Nature/Índole is a bilingual edition translated into English by Peter Boyle. In addition, Boyle provides an extensive introduction placing Kozer's work in a critical context. The Spanish word "índole" can be translated as: "a type," "a sort," or "that sort of thing." The title, Índole, therefore suggests that the poems gathered in this collection, are all instances of specific types of situations, things, or experiences. Kozer has gathered a collection of poems about everyday life--cleaning one's dentures, a woman leaning over a bowl of oatmeal, a salamander glimpsed while eating breakfast--but always with death not far away. Of Such a Nature/Índole is a remarkable collection of poems published in Cuba in 2012, covering such materials as Kozer's Jewish heritage, his Cuban childhood and ongoing connection to the Island, Buddhist and East Asian traditions of spiritual practice, his everyday life in Florida with Guadalupe, ageing, illness, and the shadow of death. Irony and humor are there as well, and to read these poems is to be in the presence of the full seriousness of poetry and its playfulness, its ability to undercut all pretensions.
