Writing to Cuba

Writing to Cuba PDF

Author: Rodrigo Lazo

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2006-03-08

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 0807876429

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In the mid-nineteenth century, some of Cuba's most influential writers settled in U.S. cities and published a variety of newspapers, pamphlets, and books. Collaborating with military movements known as filibusters, this generation of exiled writers created a body of literature demanding Cuban independence from Spain and alliance with or annexation to the United States. Drawing from rare materials archived in the United States and Havana, Rodrigo Lazo offers new readings of works by writers such as Cirilo Villaverde, Juan Clemente Zenea, Pedro Santacilia, and Miguel T. Tolon. Lazo argues that to understand these writers and their publications, we must move beyond nation-based models of literary study and consider their connections to both Cuba and the United States. Anchored by the publication of Spanish- and English-language newspapers in the United States, the transnational culture of writers Lazo calls los filibusteros went hand in hand with a long-standing economic flow between the countries and was spurred on by the writers' belief in the American promise of freedom and the hemispheric ambitions of the expansionist U.S. government. Analyzing how U.S. politicians, journalists, and novelists debated the future of Cuba, Lazo argues that the war of words carried out in Cuban-U.S. print culture played a significant role in developing nineteenth-century conceptions of territory, colonialism, and citizenship.

Letters from Cuba

Letters from Cuba PDF

Author: Ruth Behar

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2021-08-31

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 0525516492

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Pura Belpré Award Winner Ruth Behar's inspiring story of a Jewish girl who escapes Poland to make a new life in Cuba, where she works to rescue the rest of her family The situation is getting dire for Jews in Poland on the eve of World War II. Esther's father has fled to Cuba, and she is the first one to join him. It's heartbreaking to be separated from her beloved sister, so Esther promises to write down everything that happens until they're reunited. And she does, recording both the good--the kindness of the Cuban people and her discovery of a valuable hidden talent--and the bad: the fact that Nazism has found a foothold even in Cuba. Esther's evocative letters are full of her appreciation for life and reveal a resourceful, determined girl with a rare ability to bring people together, all the while striving to get the rest of their family out of Poland before it's too late. Based on Ruth Behar's family history, this compelling story celebrates the resilience of the human spirit in the most challenging times.

Cuba, Hot and Cold

Cuba, Hot and Cold PDF

Author: Tom Miller

Publisher: University of Arizona Press

Published: 2017-10-10

Total Pages: 129

ISBN-13: 0816535868

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"A collection of renowned travel writer Tom Miller's best musings on the history and culture of Cuba"--Provided by publisher.

Cuba (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize)

Cuba (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize) PDF

Author: Ada Ferrer

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2022-06-28

Total Pages: 576

ISBN-13: 1501154567

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In 1961, at the height of the Cold War, the United States severed diplomatic relations with Cuba, where a momentous revolution had taken power three years earlier. For more than half a century, the stand-off continued--through the tenure of ten American presidents and the fifty-year rule of Fidel Castro. His death in 2016, and the retirement of his brother and successor Raúl Castro in 2021, have spurred questions about the country's future. Meanwhile, politics in Washington--Barack Obama's opening to the island, Donald Trump's reversal of that policy, and the election of Joe Biden--have made the relationship between the two nations a subject of debate once more. Now, award-winning historian Ada Ferrer delivers an ambitious chronicle written for an era that demands a new reckoning with the island's past. Spanning more than five centuries, Cuba: An American History reveals the evolution of the modern nation, with its dramatic record of conquest and colonization, of slavery and freedom, of independence and revolutions made and unmade. Along the way, Ferrer explores the influence of the United States on Cuba and the many ways the island has been a recurring presence in US affairs. This is a story that will give Americans unexpected insights into the history of their own nation and, in so doing, help them imagine a new relationship with Cuba. Filled with rousing stories and characters, and drawing on more than thirty years of research in Cuba, Spain, and the United States--as well as the author's own extensive travel to the island over the same period--this is a stunning and monumental account like no other. --

AfroCuba

AfroCuba PDF

Author: Pedro Pérez Sarduy

Publisher: Ocean Press

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 9781875284412

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This anthology looks at the AfroCuban experience through the eyes of the island’s writers, scholars and artists. "A rich portrait of AfroCuba—one of the most vibrant and least well-documented of the black Caribbean diasporas."—Stuart Hall An insightful look at Cuba’s rich ethnic and cultural reality. What is it like to be black in Cuba? Does racism exist in a revolutionary society that claims to have abolished it? How does the legacy of slavery and segregation live on in today’s Cuba? Essays, poetry, extracts from novels, anthropological studies and political analysis are brought together by editors Jean Stubbs and Pedro Pérez to create an outstanding anthology of Cuban scholars, writers and artists. Drawing on an extensive knowledge of Cuba, the editors have produced a multi-faceted insight into Cuba’s right ethnic and cultural reality. The book is divided into three sections: The Die is Cast, Myth and Reality and Redrawing the Line, introducing the reader to a wide range of previously unavailable Cuban authors, in which dissenting voices speak alongside established writers, such as Fernando Ortiz. Jean Stubbs is a professor of Caribbean and Latin American History at the University of North London. She has been a visiting associate professor at Hunter College, CUNY (New York) and Rockefeller scholar at the University of Florida (Gainesville), the University of Puerto Rico and Florida International University. Stubbs has published several other books, including Cuba: The Test of Time. Pedro Pérez Sarduy is an AfroCuban poet and journalist. He was writer-in-residence at Columbia University and a Rockefeller visiting scholar at the University of Florida (Gainesville) and the University of Puerto Rico. He has been the recipient of several literary awards and regularly undertakes speaking tours in the United States.

This Is Cuba

This Is Cuba PDF

Author: Ben Corbett

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2007-10-15

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 0465009964

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Beyond the throngs of tourists streaming through Central Havana's broad Prado Avenue, and outside the yoke of Castro's 43-year-old Revolutionary program, there exists a parallel Cuba - a separate evolution of a people struggling to survive. With personal stories that depict a people torn between following the directives of their government and finding a way to better their lot, journalist Ben Corbett gives us the daily life of many considered outlaws by Castro's regime. But are they outlaws or rather ingenious survivors of what many Cubans consider to be a forty-year mistake, a tangle of contradictions that has resulted in a strange hybrid of American-style capitalism and a homegrown black market economy. At a time when Cuba walks precariously on the ledge between socialism and capitalism, This Is Cuba gets to the heart of this so-called outlaw culture, taking readers into the living rooms, rooftops, parks, and city streets to hear stories of frustration, hope, and survival. Updated with a new preface.

Call Me Cassandra

Call Me Cassandra PDF

Author: Marcial Gala

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2022-01-11

Total Pages: 136

ISBN-13: 0374602026

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Finalist for the 2023 PEN Translation Prize and the 2022 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction “Dazzling." —Marcela Valdes, The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice) "A spellbinding novel by one of the best writers of the Americas." —Junot Díaz, author of This is How You Lose Her Ten-year-old Rauli lives in a world that is often hostile. His older brother is violent; his philandering father doesn’t understand him; his intelligence and sensitivity do not endear him to the other children at school. He loves to read, especially Greek myths, but in Cuba in the 1970s, novels and gods can be dangerous. Despite the signs that warn Rauli to repress and fear what he is, he knows three things to be true: First, that he was born in the wrong body. Second, that he will die, aged eighteen, as a soldier in the Cuban intervention in Angola. And third, that he is the reincarnation of the Trojan princess Cassandra. Moving between Rauli’s childhood and adolescence, between the Angolan battlefield, the Cuban city of Cienfuegos, and the shores of ancient Troy, Marcial Gala’s Call Me Cassandra tells of the search for identity amid the collapse of Cuba’s utopian dreams. Burdened with knowledge of tragedies yet to come, Rauli nonetheless strives to know himself. Lyrical and gritty, heartbreaking and luminous, Rauli’s is the story of the inexorable pull of destiny.

Lucky Broken Girl

Lucky Broken Girl PDF

Author: Ruth Behar

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2017-04-11

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 0399546448

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Winner of the 2018 Pura Belpre Award! “A book for anyone mending from childhood wounds.”—Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street In this unforgettable multicultural coming-of-age narrative—based on the author’s childhood in the 1960s—a young Cuban-Jewish immigrant girl is adjusting to her new life in New York City when her American dream is suddenly derailed. Ruthie’s plight will intrigue readers, and her powerful story of strength and resilience, full of color, light, and poignancy, will stay with them for a long time. Ruthie Mizrahi and her family recently emigrated from Castro’s Cuba to New York City. Just when she’s finally beginning to gain confidence in her mastery of English—and enjoying her reign as her neighborhood’s hopscotch queen—a horrific car accident leaves her in a body cast and confined her to her bed for a long recovery. As Ruthie’s world shrinks because of her inability to move, her powers of observation and her heart grow larger and she comes to understand how fragile life is, how vulnerable we all are as human beings, and how friends, neighbors, and the power of the arts can sweeten even the worst of times.

Telex from Cuba

Telex from Cuba PDF

Author: Rachel Kushner

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2008-07

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 141656103X

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Coming of age in mid-1950s Cuba where the local sugar and nickel production are controlled by American interests, Everly Lederer and KC Stites observe the indulgences and betrayals of the adult world and are swept up by the political underground and the revolt led by Fidel and Raul Castro. 75,000 first printing.

Writing for Inclusion

Writing for Inclusion PDF

Author: Karen Ruth Kornweibel

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2018-09-15

Total Pages: 175

ISBN-13: 1683930983

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Writing for Inclusion is a study of some of the ways the idea of national identity developed in the nineteenth century in two neighboring nations, Cuba and The United States. The book examines symbolic, narrative, and sociological commonalities in the writings of four Afro-Cuban and African American writers: Juan Francisco Manzano and Frederick Douglass, fugitive slaves during mid-century; and Martín Morúa Delgado and Charles W. Chesnutt from the post-slavery period. All four share sensitivity to their imperfect inclusion as full citizens, engage in an examination of the process of racialization that hinders them in seeking such inclusion, and contest their definition as non-citizens. Works discussed include the slave narratives of Manzano and Douglass, Manzano’s poetry and play Zafira, andDouglass’s oratory and novella The Heroic Slave. Also considered, within the context provided by Manzano and Douglass, are Morúa and Chesnutt’s non-fiction writings about race and nation as well as their second-generation “tragic mulata” novels Sofía and The House Behind the Cedars. Based on an examination of the works of these four authors, Writing for Inclusion provides a detailed examination of examples of self-emancipation, the authors’ symbolic use of language, their expression of social anxieties or irony within the quest for recognition, and their arguments for an inclusive vision of national identity beyond the quagmires of race. By focusing on the process of racialization and ideas of race and national identity in a comparative context, the study seeks to highlight the artificial and contested nature of both terms and suggest new ways to interrogate them in our present day.