English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
Damn. What do I do now? I had planned an interview with a lady from the Marianao neighborhood who does community service with needy children. Because of reasons beyond my control I had to postpone it. It’s 8:00 in the morning of an unusual and cold month of January in 2010. I look at the … Continue reading “Independent Journalists’ Avatars”
Sonia Garro at her sewing machine It all started one sunless noon, on the 24th of February, 2007. “Up here,” said Sonia, a laboratory technician, who sews on a 50-year-old machine on the porch of her home, from where she often saw accidents involving children playing without the watchful eyes of their parents. And her large … Continue reading “Sonia Garro, or the Cruelty of a Regime”
The old computer in Lucerne The idea of having a blog where I could post about life in my country and to have the power to write in the first person about the small things in this scene that surround me, that was an idea that was cooked a long time over a slow flame. … Continue reading “From Havana, Year 1”
In Cuba, everything is negotiable. Even death. This is what happened two weeks ago to the Qunitana family. Their mother, an elderly woman of 71, had died of renal failure. After the doctor certified the lady’s death, what the family lived through was a tragedy with overtones of black comedy. The night of the wake, … Continue reading “The business of death”
If the Cuban generals had liked rock, things in Cuba might have been different. Perhaps the soldiers would not have gone out in their vulgar Russian jeeps, scissors in hand, cutting the hair of those devoted to this type of music. And they would not have had to arrest thousands of young people whose only … Continue reading “If the comandante danced to rock…”
The First Act: The Executioner’s Weeping (1999) For a long time, Jorge Gonzalez, 47, suffered the same nightmares. A discharge from a rifleman on a misty and starless night. Then, he senses the sound of a shot dealt to a condemned man who is he himself. He always wakes up the same: bathed in sweat … Continue reading “A Drama in Two Acts”
The new influenza is gaining ground in Cuba. With the change in the weather, according to epidemiologists, it’s expected that the H1N1 virus will reap its harvest among the population of the island. As of October 1, the Ministry of Public Health reported the detection of 457 cases. Now the Hubert de Blanck High School, … Continue reading “H1N1 Attacks”
Ray Bradbury is my favorite science fiction writer. Sometimes I doubt whether what he’s written really deserves this classification. He has declared himself to be a fantasy writer and said that his only work of science fiction is Fahrenheit 451. This novel is a good case in point that science fiction is not a subgenre … Continue reading “The fire is bright and clean”
When I was in primary school I liked to write (the famous compositions) and reading and writing came easy to me. Later, in pre-university, I was seduced by technology, the electronics, the telex (telecommunications) and thus I entered into the world of computers and I’ve never left it. I believe that, like we all carry … Continue reading “Kundera and La Jiribilla”