English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
Francis Sanchez, 6 April 2017 – A group of people who loved him, met this April 5 to remember the poet Pedro Alberto Assed, who recently died. In the library of his city, Ciego de Avila, Cuba, the young writer Heriberto Machado called us together, and I had the opportunity to speak from my emotion … Continue reading “A Candle Lit by Assef and His Poetry / Francis Sanchez”
Note: Décima (tenth) refers to a ten-line stanza of poetry Francis Sanchez, April 5, 2017 – Decimismo in Cuba is a phenomenon that in recent years has not stopped growing, widely overflowing in rural culture, orality and festive traditions. A world of the Cuban décima with its own laws, with its own myths and knowledge, that for a … Continue reading “All the Good Decimistas Write… Poetry? / Francis Sanchez”
Francis Sanchez, 29 March 2017 – Cuba is the country with the second highest levels of depression in Latin America, exceeded only by Brazil. The statistics appear in a report from the World Health Organization (WHO) released in Geneva. From this report, paradoxically, this data is omitted by Cuban publications that otherwise echo the report. The … Continue reading “Depressed But Happy? / Francis Sanchez”
14ymedio, Havana, 7 March 2017 – The poet and essayist Francis Sanchez has returned to the blogosphere this week after six years of not updating his personal blog. The writer from Ciego de Avila announced he would continue to publish his ideas “without censorship” on his site Man in the Clouds, now with a new … Continue reading “Poet Francis Sanchez Reopens His Blog After Six Years Of Digital Silence / 14ymedio”
Francis Sanchez, 1 March 2017 – I am re-opening this blog where I will publish my ideas without censorship. It’s been years since October 2010 when I started “Man in the Clouds” and after five months I was forced to stop updating it. All of the bloggers in Cuba were being accused at that time … Continue reading “Why Am I (Again) “in the clouds”? / Francis Sanchez”
Writers tired of mediocrity Ángel Santiesteban, 9 March 2015 — I recognize that at times I don’t mention writers living in Cuba for fear of harming them, although I know how most Cuba intellectuals think, I know, I’m aware of it, because of what they do, the game continues and what will they get in return … Continue reading “Francis Sanchez, Another of the Writers Tired of Mediocrity? / Angel Santiesteban”
14YMEDIO, Francis Sanchez, Ciego de Avila, 18 August 2014 – The anecdotes, the identities and the composition of the family of the Cuban Revolution’s Maximum Leaders, after become a taboo subject due to steps taken by themselves, has become the subject of public interest and a source of constant speculation. A delicate area, the private … Continue reading “Juanita Castro: Memory is Never Harmless / 14ymedio, Francis Sanchez”
On the 15th of February 2008, with the uploading to the internet of Issue 1 (January-February), the magazine Convivencia was born in Pinar del Río. Since then, six years have passed of uninterrupted bimonthly publication. The new publication invited one to live on a horizon at once broad and intimate, democratic, heavy with possibilities and … Continue reading “The Experiment of Hope / Francis Sanchez”
At the request of Angel Santiesteban I am publishing here the letter sent by the well-known poet and writer Francis Sanchez, in which he attached an article he wrote. The Editor Angelito: I don’t know if you can open your mail, if you can read this message. I just want to say: Be strong “boy,” … Continue reading “Francis Sanchez: Smoke Signal for the Release of Angel Santiesteban”
Almost thirty years after the fall of the communist bloc, the Cuban writer José Lezama Lima is still dealing with “Moscow” through the ongoing influence of the Soviet Union, to which he himself fell victim, dying after having been ostracized after the principles of dialectical materialism were brought to bear on him. Though long dead and … Continue reading “Lezama Lima vs. Moscow / Francis Sanchez”
(A Contribution to Travel Literature) That the facilities for obtaining patents for small services trigger a headlong rush among Cubans you already knew. The restrictions on private enterprise, and chronic shortages, plus the deep social (and stomach!) vacuum left by inefficient state enterprises that have monopolized the trade, was an antecedent too pitiful to not … Continue reading “The War of the Paladares (Restaurants) / Francis Sánchez”
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Francis Sanchez, 18 April 2011 — I had promised to publish two other parts of my last post, “Closed for Demolition”. Many days have gone by without my being able to do so. I will no longer do it, because definitely what I had in mind would only add essay-type content. The fundamental thing, the … Continue reading “On Closing / Francis Sánchez”
[I have decided to publish, before this blog is closed down, some texts that I didn’t publish at the time because it was practically impossible to do it because of obvious difficulties or because as time passed I doubted that it would be the best idea. Due to recent events, I think it is best … Continue reading “Closed by Demolition / Francis Sánchez”
Photo: Francis Sánchez. One day a long time ago, I drew the word birch to my favourite and beloved poet Herberto Padilla, the word which he could never climb in such a short life the place where we had gone running to with our eyes so little we cut ourselves with the crystal of the … Continue reading “The Word Birch / Francis Sánchez”
