The Cambridge History of Cuban Literature

By: Vicky Unruh and Jacqueline Loss

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Synopsis: Extending from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century, The Cambridge History of Cuban Literature is the first book in English to tell the intricate story of Cuban literary-intellectual culture from the seventeenth-century to the twenty-first century. This landmark book highlights the intricacies of linguistic and cultural translation embodied in telling a story in English about a body of work expressed predominantly in Spanish, but also French, Haitian Kreyòl, Angolan Portuguese, and English. Broad in its scope, this book encompasses such major figures as Gómez de Avellaneda, Heredia, Plácido, Manzano, Villaverde, Martí, Casal, Carpentier, L. Cabrera, Mañach, Loynaz, Piñera, Lezama Lima, and Cabrera Infante, as well as theatre and performance groups, film, post-revolutionary projects, post-1989 Special Period writers, and literature of Cuba's diasporas. It highlights four key features weaving through Cuban literary history: its engagement with international networks; its key role in cultural identity debates throughout Latin America; persistent debates about race, gender, and class; and the tropes of travel and movement—voluntary, exploratory, enslaved, migratory, or exilic.