Cuba and the Fall

Cuba and the Fall
Author: Eduardo González
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2010-08-05
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0813929873

The literature of Cuba, argues Eduardo González in this new book, takes on quite different features depending on whether one is looking at it from "the inside" or from "the outside," a view that in turn is shaped by official political culture and the authors it sanctions or by those authors and artists who exist outside state policies and cultural politics. González approaches this issue by way of two twentieth-century writers who are central to the canon of gay homoerotic expression and sensibility in Cuban culture: José Lezama Lima (1910–1976) and Reinaldo Arenas (1943–1990). Drawing on the plots and characters in their works, González develops both a story line and a moral tale, revolving around the Christian belief in the fall from grace and the possibility of redemption, that bring the writers into a unique and revealing interaction with one another. The work of Lezama Lima and Arenas is compared with that of fellow Cuban author Virgilio Piñera (1912–1979) and, in a wider context, with the non-Cuban writers John Milton, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Faulkner, John Ruskin, and James Joyce to show how their themes get replicated in González’s selected Cuban fiction. Also woven into this interaction are two contemporary films—The Devil’s Backbone (2004) and Pan’s Labyrinth (2007)—whose moral and political themes enhance the ethical values and conflicts of the literary texts. Referring to this eclectic gathering of texts, González charts a cultural course in which Cuba moves beyond the Caribbean and into a latitude uncharted by common words, beyond the tyranny of place.

Latin American Writers on Gay and Lesbian Themes

Latin American Writers on Gay and Lesbian Themes
Author: David William Foster
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 532
Release: 1994-11-07
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0313368740

Gay and lesbian themes in Latin American literature have been largely ignored. This reference fills this gap by providing more than a hundred alphabetically arranged entries for Latin American authors who have treated gay or lesbian material in their works. Each entry explores the significance of gay and lesbian themes in a particular author's writings and closes with a bibliography of primary and secondary sources. The figures included have a professed gay identity, or have written on gay or lesbian themes in either a positive or negative way, or have authored works in which a gay sensibility can be identified. The volume pays particular attention to the difficulty of ascribing North American critical perspectives to Latin American authors, and studies these authors within the larger context of Latin American culture. The book includes entries for men and women, and for authors from Latin American countries as well as Latino writers from the United States. The entries are written by roughly 60 expert contributors from Latin America, the U.S., and Europe.

Cuban Memory Wars

Cuban Memory Wars
Author: Michael J. Bustamante
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2021-02-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 1469662043

For many Cubans, Fidel Castro's Revolution represented deliverance from a legacy of inequality and national disappointment. For others—especially those exiled in the United States—Cuba's turn to socialism made the prerevolutionary period look like paradise lost. Michael J. Bustamante unsettles this familiar schism by excavating Cubans' contested memories of the Revolution's roots and results over its first twenty years. Cubans' battles over the past, he argues, not only defied simple political divisions; they also helped shape the course of Cuban history itself. As the Revolution unfolded, the struggle over historical memory was triangulated among revolutionary leaders in Havana, expatriate organizations in Miami, and average Cuban citizens. All Cubans leveraged the past in individual ways, but personal memories also collided with the Cuban state's efforts to institutionalize a singular version of the Revolution's story. Drawing on troves of archival materials, including visual media, Bustamante tracks the process of what he calls retrospective politics across the Florida Straits. In doing so, he drives Cuban history beyond the polarized vision seemingly set in stone today and raises the prospect of a more inclusive national narrative.

The Assault

The Assault
Author: Reinaldo Arenas
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 177
Release: 1995-06-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0140157182

In this, the final volume in the series of five novels that constitute his "secret history of Cuba", Reinaldo Arenas paints a harrowing, and at times boldly entertaining, Kafka-esque picture of a dehumanized people living in a world where homosexuality is a crime punishable by death and a cockroach hunt makes for a national holiday. Narrated by a hate-filled government torturer who has become an agent for the "Bureau of Counterwhispering"," The Assault follows his travels through a blackly humorous shadowland as he winnow out whisperers, sexual deviants, and dissidents of every sort--until memory has been banished and spoken language has been nearly forgotten.

Homosexuality and Invisibility in Revolutionary Cuba

Homosexuality and Invisibility in Revolutionary Cuba
Author: María Encarnación Martín López
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2015
Genre: History
ISBN: 1855662884

Offers alternative insights into the complex relationship between politics and intelligentsia in revolutionary Cuba.

Una y otra vez

Una y otra vez
Author: Leonel Grimaldo Salazar
Publisher: Editorial San Pablo
Total Pages: 267
Release:
Genre:
ISBN: 9586929388

Todos hemos vivido momentos de desasosiego, de tristeza, de soledad, de dolor, así como momentos de alegía, de euforia y de entusiasmo. Esa es la vida, un ir y venir por caminos insospechados, rumbo a un solo fin: la felicidad.

A History of Literature in the Caribbean: Hispanic and francophone regions

A History of Literature in the Caribbean: Hispanic and francophone regions
Author: Albert James Arnold
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 599
Release: 1994
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9027234426

This history for the first time charts the literature of the entire Caribbean, the islands as well as continental littoral, as one cultural region. It breaks new ground in establishing a common grid for reading literatures that have been kept separate by their linguistic frontiers. Readers will have access to the best current scholarship on the evolution of popular and literate cultures in the various regions since their earliest emergence."The History of Literature in the Caribbean" brings together the most distinguished team of literary Caribbeanists ever assembled, cutting across ideological commitments and critical methods. Differences in point of view between individual contributors are left intact here as the sign of the colonial inheritance of the region. Introductions and conclusions to the various sections of the History written by the respective subeditors, set them in proper perspective. The unique synoptic aspect of the History lies in its comprehensiveness and its range, which are unequaled."Contributors" A. James Arnold, Julio Rodriguez-Luis, H. Lopez Morales, Maria Elena Rodriguez Castro, Silvio Torres Saillant, Seymour Menton, Ian I. Smart, Efrain Barradas, Raquel Chang-Rodriguez, Carlos Alonso, Ivan A. Schulman, W.L. Siemens, William Luis, Gustavo Pellon, Emilio Bejel, Sandra M. Cypess, Peter Earle, Adriana Mndez Rodenas, J. Michael Dash, Ulrich Fleischmann, Maximilien Laroche, Rgis Antoine, Lon-Franois Hoffmann, Randolph Hezekiah, Bridget Jones, F.I. Case, Marie-Denise Shelton, Beverly Ormerod, J. Michael Dash, Jack Corzani, Anthea Morrison, Juris Silenieks, Frantz Fanon, Vere Knight.

Before Night Falls

Before Night Falls
Author: Reinaldo Arenas
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2020-02-25
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0143134841

The acclaimed memoir of homosexual Cuban author Reinaldo Arenas chronicling his tumultuous yet luminary life, from his impoverished upbringing in Cuba to his imprisonment at the hands of a Communist regime. A Penguin Vitae Edition The astonishing memoir by visionary Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas "is a book above all about being free," said The New York Review of Books--sexually, politically, artistically. Arenas recounts a stunning odyssey from his poverty-stricken childhood in rural Cuba and his adolescence as a rebel fighting for Castro, through his supression as a writer, imprisonment as a homosexual, his flight from Cuba via the Mariel boat lift, and his subsequent life and the events leading to his death in New York. In what The Miami Herald calls his "deathbed ode to eroticism," Arenas breaks through the code of secrecy and silence that protects the privileged in a state where homosexuality is a political crime. Recorded in simple, straightforward prose, this is the true story of the Kafkaesque life and world re-created in the author's acclaimed novels. Penguin Classics launches a new hardcover series with five American classics that are relevant and timeless in their power, and part of a dynamic and diverse landscape of classic fiction and nonfiction from almost seventy-five years of classics publishing. Penguin Vitae provides readers with beautifully designed classics that have shaped the course of their lives, and welcomes new readers to discover these literary gifts of personal inspiration, intellectual engagement, and creative originality.

Una patria allá lejos en el pasado

Una patria allá lejos en el pasado
Author: César Andrés Núñez
Publisher: El Colegio de Mexico AC
Total Pages: 474
Release: 2011-05-20
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 6074626006

Las historias e invenciones de Félix Muriel, de Rafael Dieste, se publicaron en Buenos Aires en 1943 y, ya entonces, pudo causar cierta sorpresa el hecho de que su autor, exiliado republicano, no se refiriera en ellas a la reciente guerra de España ni a sus consecuencias. Sin embargo, de modo subrepticio, la política estructura el texto y contribuye a construir la problemática unidad del libro -un libro que muchos llamaron "obra maestra" y que José Ramón Marra-López ha situado "al margen de toda posible clasificación". No para clasificarlo, sino para entender esa "marginalidad" y los motivos de su encanto está escrito este estudio, el primero dedicado en extenso específicamente al volumen y el primero que contempla con detenimiento el manuscrito autógrafo.