Download or read book The Maids of Havana written by Pedro Pérez Sarduy and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2010-03-23 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Normal.dotm 0 0 1 55 314 Escritor/Periodista 2 1 385 12.0 Set in Cuba and Miami, from the 1940s to the present, two Afro-Cuban women narrate their life stories. One leaves a small town in the central part of the island to work as a maid in Havana in prerevolutionary Cuba. The other, her friend's daughter, educated in revolutionary Cuba, leaves Havana in the 1980 Mariel boatlift, to find work as a maid in Miami A history full circle?
Download or read book Hierarchies at Home written by Anasa Hicks and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-08-25 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book destabilizes racialized and gendered assumptions about labour in Cuba and challenges traditional chronologies of 20th-century Cuban history.
Download or read book Cuban Studies 42 written by Catherine Krull and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2012-08-12 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cuban Studies 42 focuses on gender and equality issues in post-1959 Cuba, and their impact on cultural and institutional change. It views subjects such as politics, labor, food and diet, race, ethnicity, HIV/AIDS, sex education, tourism and prostitution, masculinity, and feminism, among others.
Download or read book Patriots and Traitors in Revolutionary Cuba 1961 1981 written by Lillian Guerra and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2023-01-17 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Authorities in postrevolutionary Cuba worked to establish a binary society in which citizens were either patriots or traitors. This all-or-nothing approach reflected in the familiar slogan “patria o muerte” (fatherland or death) has recently been challenged in protests that have adopted the theme song “patria y vida” (fatherland and life), a collaboration by exiles that, predictably, has been banned in Cuba itself. Lillian Guerra excavates the rise of a Soviet-advised Communist culture controlled by state institutions and the creation of a multidimensional system of state security whose functions embedded themselves into daily activities and individual consciousness and reinforced these binaries. But despite public performance of patriotism, the life experience of many Cubans was somewhere in between. Guerra explores these in-between spaces and looks at Cuban citizens’ complicity with authoritarianism, leaders’ exploitation of an earnest anti-imperialist nationalism, and the duality of an existence that contains elements of both support and betrayal of a nation and of an ideology.
Download or read book Coming of Age in the Afro Latin American Novel written by Bonnie S. Wasserman and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2022 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the dimensions of the coming-of-age novel in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and Brazil, focusing on works by eight major Afro-Latin American writers
Download or read book The Latin American Identity and the African Diaspora written by Antonio Olliz Boyd and published by Cambria Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Antonio Olliz Boyd is an emeritus professor of Latin American literature at Temple University. He holds a PhD from Stanford University, an MS from Grorgetown University, and a BA from Long Island University. Dr. Olliz Boyd has published various essays on Afro Latino aesthetics in literature in volumes, such as the Dictionary of Literary Biography: Modern Latin-American Fiction Writers; Singular Like a Bird: The Art of Nancy Morejon; Imagination, Emblems and Expressions: Essays on Latin American, Caribbean, and Continental Culture and Identity; Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays among others, as well as articles on Afro Latino literary criticism in various refereed journals. --Book Jacket.
Download or read book Waiting For Snow In Havana written by Carlos Eire and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-12-11 with total page 579 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A childhood in a privileged household in 1950s Havana was joyous and cruel, like any other-but with certain differences. The neighbour's monkey was liable to escape and run across your roof. Surfing was conducted by driving cars across the breakwater. Lizards and firecrackers made frequent contact. Carlos Eire's childhood was a little different from most. His father was convinced he had been Louis XVI in a past life. At school, classmates with fathers in the Batista government were attended by chauffeurs and bodyguards. At a home crammed with artifacts and paintings, portraits of Jesus spoke to him in dreams and nightmares. Then, in January 1959, the world changes: Batista is suddenly gone, a cigar-smoking guerrilla has taken his place, and Christmas is cancelled. The echo of firing squads is everywhere. And, one by one, the author's schoolmates begin to disappear-spirited away to the United States. Carlos will end up there himself, without his parents, never to see his father again. Narrated with the urgency of a confession, WAITING FOR SNOW IN HAVANA is both an ode to a paradise lost and an exorcism. More than that, it captures the terrible beauty of those times in our lives when we are certain we have died-and then are somehow, miraculously, reborn.
Download or read book Black Women Citizenship and the Making of Modern Cuba written by Takkara K. Brunson and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2023-03-07 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Illuminating the activism of Black women during Cuba’s prerevolutionary period Association of Black Women Historians Letitia Woods Brown Book Prize In Black Women, Citizenship, and the Making of Modern Cuba, Takkara Brunson traces how women of African descent battled exclusion on multiple fronts and played an important role in forging a modern democracy. Brunson takes a much-needed intersectional approach to the political history of the era, examining how Black women’s engagement with questions of Cuban citizenship intersected with racial prejudice, gender norms, and sexual politics, incorporating Afro-diasporic and Latin American feminist perspectives. Brunson demonstrates that between the 1886 abolition of slavery in Cuba and the 1959 Revolution, Black women—without formal political power—navigated political movements in their efforts to create a more just society. She examines how women helped build a Black public sphere as they claimed moral respectability and sought racial integration. She reveals how Black women entered into national women’s organizations, labor unions, and political parties to bring about legal reforms. Brunson shows how women of African descent achieved individual victories as part of a collective struggle for social justice; in doing so, she highlights how racism and sexism persisted even as legal definitions of Cuban citizenship evolved.
Download or read book AfroCuba written by Pedro Pérez Sarduy and published by Ocean Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Leaving Little Havana written by Cecilia M Fernandez and published by Beating Windward Press. This book was released on 2015-01-06 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revolution uprooted six-year-old Cecilia from her comfortable middle-class Cuban home and dropped her into the low-income neighborhood of Miami’s Little Havana. Her philandering father focused on rebuilding his career, chasing the American promise of wealth and freedom from the past. Her mother spiraled into madness trying to hold the family together and get him back. Neglected and trapped, Cecilia rebelled against her conservative culture and embraced the 1960s counter-culture - seeking love, attention and a place of her own in America. But immigrant children either thrive or self-destruct in a new land. How will Cecilia beat the odds? While most memoirs by Cuban-Americans revolve around childhood scenes in Cuba and explore the experiences of a young man, Leaving Little Havana is the first refugee memoir to focus on a Cuban girl growing up in America, rising above the obstacles and clearing a path to her American Dream. “Leaving Little Havana is the compelling story of a Cuban girl seeking a new life in the U.S. with her family as the Cuban revolution unfolds in the early sixties. 'Cecilita’s' personal account, and sexual awakening, is transparent, sad, and triumphant, sprinkled with anecdotes of an emerging Cuban-American landscape. In short, this book is a colorful reminiscence of historical scenes on both sides of the Straits of Florida, providing closure to a Cuban American journalist coming to terms with her turbulent past.” - Guarione M. Diaz, President Emeritus, Cuban American National Council “Cecilia Fernandez’s memoir of growing up Cuban in Miami is not only fascinating reading, it tells more about the story of Cubans in this U.S. than a truckload of sociology textbooks - and is a thousand times more entertaining!” - Dan Wakefield, author of New York in the Fifties “Leaving Little Havana is a candid, touching, and engaging memoir of a young Cuban exile’s coming of age. Cecilia Fernandez writes with passion and intensity, both of her missteps and her triumphs, casting fresh light on the American experience in the process.” - Les Standiford, author of Havana Run and Bringing Adam Home “Cecilia Fernandez gives us a coming of age story told with wide open eyes and vivid details of growing up in Little Havana. Broken-hearted more times than she can count, she gradually finds a path to new beginnings and the infinite promises of the American Dream. A poignant and important chronicle of the Miami Cuban immigrant journey.” - Ruth Behar, author of Traveling Heavy: A Memoir in Between Journeys “Every so often along comes a book that seizes you by the collar and arrests you on the spot. From page one, Leaving Little Havana is a brilliant, voice-driven book that will make your heart skip a few beats. My experience reading this book was similar to the first time I read The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros when you instantly know you are reading a classic, a story so achingly beautiful and unforgettable you relish every last word as if it were the buzzing of a hummingbird at your lips feeding you honey. This book is about family, about what happens to family in exile, about how people come into a great world of struggle and manage to get by and survive. The author has a great gift for capturing that world-known enclave of Miami we love and call Little Havana. This might be the book that puts it on the literary map for good and forever.” - Virgil Suárez, author of Latin Jazz, The Cutter, and 90 Miles: Selected and New Poems
Download or read book Out of Havana written by Araceli Alonso and published by . This book was released on 2014-05 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Out of Havana provides an uncommon ordinary woman's insight into the last half century of Cuba's tumultuous recent history. More powerfully than an academic study or historical account, it allows us intimately to grasp the enthusiasm, commitment and sense of promise that defined many average Cubans' experience of the 1959 Revolution and the first triumphant decades of the Castro regime. As the story shifts into the final decades of the last century (the 1980s Mariel Boatlift, the so-called "special period in time of peace" [from 1991 to the end of the decade], and the 1994 Balseros or Rafters Crisis), it starts gradually to reveal, with understated yet relentless eloquence, an ultimately insuperable rift between the high-flown official rhetoric of uncompromising struggle and revolutionary sacrifice and the harsh conditions and cruelly absurd situations that the protagonist, along with the majority of Cubans, begin routinely to live out. It is a rare and important document, a unique personal chronicle of an everyday Cuban reality that most Americans continue to know only fragmentarily.
Download or read book Cuba Another Side of the Story written by Iris M. Diaz and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2010-01-27 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cuba: Another Side of the Story is a memoir of how life changed for many children growing up in a country slowly dying under constant political conflict. The story is told in three parts: Part I “Before Castro,” Part II “Life under Castro,” Part III “Life in Exile.” This book creates a vivid sense of time and place through childhood memories of pre- and post-Castro Cuba, from 1945 to 1967. The forty two stories, told through the voice of a child, highlight moments of injustice in the eyes of a young girl who does not understand why the world around her is so strange. Her nanny, a poor black woman, shaped her soul and showed her the other side of the story, the story of the poor who are voiceless in a world where only those who can afford to pay for elite private schools can get ahead in life. This nanny becomes the spiritual guide who enables a very sensitive young child to navigate in a confusing world. Every one of the 42 stories focuses on a moment where the child relives memories of what she witnessed growing up. The first story is dedicated to Nana, the person whose memory guides her to write her life story. The title of the stories clearly describe how Nana influenced the author and helped her see the other side of the story. “El Barrio” describes a neighborhood where the rich, middle class and the poor lived in close proximity, a reflection of what Cuban society was in the 1950’s-“Everyone lived under the same sun, moon and stars but our worlds were very different.” The chapter about “Sunday Mass” describes the well-dressed parishioners who every Sunday walked through the park next to the Church and ignored the beggars who held their arms out, palms up, hoping to get a nickel or dime. “I don’t think the beggars got any of the money the priests collected every Sunday because they came back every Sunday. I never understood why God didn’t take care of everybody the same way.” Religious conflict plus the rich versus poor struggles are present throughout the book. Castro started his revolution claiming he wanted to help the poor. In the end, everyone, including the poor, were deceived by a charismatic man who understood what the poor wanted to hear, a promise of equality for all. His communist doctrine doomed the possibility of ever achieving equality for all. During Sunday Mass the priests would often remind poor parishioners how much God loved the needy by quoting verses like, “Blessed are the poor for they shall inherit the Kingdom of God,” or “For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” Religion and poverty seem to be two themes that prevail throughout this book, expressed clearly by the voice of the author who puts into words her thoughts by writing, “I never understood why God didn’t take care of everybody the same way.” The stories “The Day the Old Cuba Died“ and “The Bay of Pigs Invasion” describe the days leading to the failed attempt by Cuban exiles to get rid of the Castro regime. All hope and dreams died. The only dream left was to find a way to leave the island. The chapter “Adios Cuba” is a vivid memory of what it means to become a political exile. “Exile is more than a change of address, it is a spiritual displacement.” This book is not a research study about Cuban maids, family, religion or politics; it is a story about a young child and the life of her nanny and maids who allowed her to enter their world, a world that many don’t dare to acknowledge.
Download or read book The Voice of the Turtle written by Peter R. Bush and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An anthology of stories by Cuban writers. In Uva de Aragon's Round Trip, when a Cuban woman dies while visiting her sister in the U.S. the sister adopts her identity and returns to Cuba. In the title story, by Guillermo Cabrera Infante, a boy pays dearly for coitus with an overturned female giant turtle.
Download or read book Yemoja written by Solimar Otero and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2013-11-01 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the 2014 Albert J. Raboteau Prize for the Best Book in Africana Religions presented by the Journal of Africana Religions This is the first collection of essays to analyze intersectional religious and cultural practices surrounding the deity Yemoja. In Afro-Atlantic traditions, Yemoja is associated with motherhood, women, the arts, and the family. This book reveals how Yemoja traditions are negotiating gender, sexuality, and cultural identities in bold ways that emphasize the shifting beliefs and cultural practices of contemporary times. Contributors come from a wide range of fields—religious studies, art history, literature, and anthropology—and focus on the central concern of how different religious communities explore issues of race, gender, and sexuality through religious practice and discourse. The volume adds the voices of religious practitioners and artists to those of scholars to engage in conversations about how Latino/a and African diaspora religions respond creatively to a history of colonization.
Download or read book Next Year in Havana written by Chanel Cleeton and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A HELLO SUNSHINE x REESE WITHERSPOON BOOK CLUB PICK “A beautiful novel that's full of forbidden passions, family secrets and a lot of courage and sacrifice.”—Reese Witherspoon After the death of her beloved grandmother, a Cuban-American woman travels to Havana, where she discovers the roots of her identity—and unearths a family secret hidden since the revolution... Havana, 1958. The daughter of a sugar baron, nineteen-year-old Elisa Perez is part of Cuba's high society, where she is largely sheltered from the country's growing political unrest—until she embarks on a clandestine affair with a passionate revolutionary... Miami, 2017. Freelance writer Marisol Ferrera grew up hearing romantic stories of Cuba from her late grandmother Elisa, who was forced to flee with her family during the revolution. Elisa's last wish was for Marisol to scatter her ashes in the country of her birth. Arriving in Havana, Marisol comes face-to-face with the contrast of Cuba's tropical, timeless beauty and its perilous political climate. When more family history comes to light and Marisol finds herself attracted to a man with secrets of his own, she'll need the lessons of her grandmother's past to help her understand the true meaning of courage.
Download or read book Last Dance in Havana written by Eugene Robinson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-11-20 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In power for forty-four years and counting, Fidel Castro has done everything possible to define Cuba to the world and to itself -- yet not even he has been able to control the thoughts and dreams of his people. Those thoughts and dreams are the basis for what may become a post-Castro Cuba. To more fully understand the future of America's near neighbor, veteran reporter Eugene Robinson knew exactly where to look -- or rather, to listen. In this provocative work, Robinson takes us on a sweaty, pulsating, and lyrical tour of a country on the verge of revolution, using its musicians as a window into its present and future. Music is the mother's milk of Cuban culture. Cubans express their fondest hopes, their frustrations, even their political dissent, through music. Most Americans think only of salsa and the Buena Vista Social Club when they think of the music of Cuba, yet those styles are but a piece of a broad musical spectrum. Just as the West learned more about China after the Cultural Revolution by watching From Mao to Mozart, so will readers discover the real Cuba -- the living, breathing, dying, yet striving Cuba. Cuban music is both wildly exuberant and achingly melancholy. A thick stew of African and European elements, it is astoundingly rich and influential to have come from such a tiny island. From rap stars who defy the government in their lyrics to violinists and pianists who attend the world's last Soviet-style conservatory to international pop stars who could make millions abroad yet choose to stay and work for peanuts, Robinson introduces us to unforgettable characters who happily bring him into their homes and backstage discussions. Despite Castro's attempts to shut down nightclubs, obstruct artists, and subsidize only what he wants, the musicians and dancers of Cuba cannot stop, much less behave. Cubans move through their complicated lives the way they move on the dance floor, dashing and darting and spinning on a dime, seducing joy and fulfillment and next week's supply of food out of a broken system. Then at night they take to the real dance floors and invent fantastic new steps. Last Dance in Havana is heartwrenching, yet ultimately as joyous and hopeful as a rocking club late on a Saturday night.
Download or read book No Longer Invisible Afro Latin Americans Today written by and published by Minority Rights Group. This book was released on 1995-06-01 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Latin Americans of African ancestry have historically been an oppressed and neglected minority. Almost all descended from slaves, and numbering perhaps 125 million people, they have generally been denied access to power, influence or material progress. While Afro-Latin Americans have frequently challenged their oppression, with some success, and have seen many aspects of their culture absorbed into mainstream Latin American life, persistent myths of 'colour-blind racial democracy' and blanqueamiento ('whitening') mask the insidious and often brutal reality of the discrimination they face. Written by scholars from many countries, No Longer Invisible charts the Afro-Latin American experience from slavery to contemporary times, showing the contrasts as well as the similarities across the region. Intended both for specialists and for interested general readers, the book makes an important contribution to the study of racism and anti-racism in Latin America today. The distinct but extraordinarily diverse ethnic and cultural identities of Afro-Latin Americans have received little official recognition. But today a growing movement is voicing pride in the Afro-Latin American heritage, asserting common identities and working to defend and advance collective rights. This fascinating book provides a major human-rights-focused survey that aims to reflect and be part of that process of rediscovery and renewal. Each chapter considers a particular country or subregion. The authors discuss the historical background, the legacy of resistance to oppression, how members of the minorities see themselves, their culture, the contemporary experience of discrimination, contrasting ethnic identities assumed by women and men, collective aspirations, the struggle for equality, and future prospects. The book also includes a wide-ranging general introduction, a final chapter that poses fundamental questions about comparative race relations in the Americas and beyond, a regional population map and black-and-white photographs. Please note that the terminology in the fields of minority rights and indigenous peoples’ rights has changed over time. MRG strives to reflect these changes as well as respect the right to self-identification on the part of minorities and indigenous peoples. At the same time, after over 50 years’ work, we know that our archive is of considerable interest to activists and researchers. Therefore, we make available as much of our back catalogue as possible, while being aware that the language used may not reflect current thinking on these issues.
