English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
Communists or dissidents, famous or unknown, Cubans love awards and competitions. Of all kinds, national and foreign. They delight in being chosen and enjoy the glory they feel when they win. It doesn’t matter if the prize is a diploma or a work of art. The money, yes. In pesos, it’s not bad, but in … Continue reading “Cuba Will Have to Put Its Dreams of a Nobel Prize on Hold / Iván García”
14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, 12 June 2023 — At the recent Madrid Book Fair, they read out a manifesto: Literature, always on the side of freedom. The regime in Havana, always quick with a smart answer, put out a riposte in the name of Casa de las Americas, with the title: On the side … Continue reading “Now Havana Wants to be Dulcinea”
14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 7 May 2023 – I re-read Dulce María Loynaz, I listen to recordings of her voice, I submerge myself in her world. I see her descending to the lounge of her house in an iron elevator. She opens the grille and exits, fanning herself, passing between the armchairs and yellowing sculptures. … Continue reading “A Soldier’s Daughter”
14ymedio, Havana, March 15, 2023 — The Madrid-based Betania publishing house has issued a catalog containing a collection of thirty-seven Cuban-themed e-books that can be downloaded for free from its website. The volumes are available in PDF format and were released by the publisher between 2011 and 2023. As stated in its introduction, Betania began … Continue reading “Betania Is Offering Readers Thirty-Seven Cuban Books as Free Downloads”
14ymedio, Manuel Llorente, Madrid, 14 October 2022 — Federico García Lorca’s first adventure in the Americas could not have been more beneficial for him. The young man who, with a broken heart, embarked for the United States in 1929, bore no resemblance to the man who returned to Cádiz on 30 June 1930 aboard the … Continue reading “Garcia Lorca in Cuba: Diary of a Resurrection”
Alas Tensas, Editorial, 2 May 2018 – Those of us publishing the feminist magazine Alas Tensas have been subject to systematic harassment and attacks over the last two months. No doubt they want or need our independent and self-proclaimed feminist media to disappear. As the British feminist Mary Beard says in her essay The Public … Continue reading “Why Do They Want to Cut Our Wings? / Alas Tensas”
14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 18 February 2017 — When one looks at that territory of Cuban literature inhabited by women, it is usually observed from the concept of gender. Among those who study the phenomenon with more intensity, and also with more courage, Ileana Álvarez stands out. She is a poet, essayist, author of a dozen books and … Continue reading “Ileana Álvarez, Wings Always Ready To Fly / 14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar”
Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, 10 April 2015 We Cubans are going to miss Fidel a lot. Fidel was a spontaneous, almost infantile, assassin with an irresistible charisma that eroticized even his bodyguards. Meanwhile, he could kill just out of a curiosity to see his victims’ last expression of panic or rage. Like someone who naively opens … Continue reading “Everyone Bears Your Name, Fidel / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
Grown in Exercises of Death, Wendy Guerra (Taken from her blog HABÁNAME) (Reposted by Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo in his blog) I have death as white and truth far away… – Don’t give me your fresh roses; I am terrible for roses. Give me the ocean…Dulce María Loynaz Death, solicitous and vigilant followed me until my fall. … Continue reading “Wendy War”
Of García Márquez and other Demons By Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo Prolific, brilliant, celebrity, provocateur, agent, incisive, insidious, one of the last intellectual icons of the Latin American left has died: Gabriel García Márquez, el Gabo. His claim on immortality is supported by a Nobel Prize, which owed a lot to the Latin American literary … Continue reading “GABO RELOADED / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
To celebrate World Book Day — and the Castilian language — on 23 April, the online edition of the daily El Pais has presented to readers in Latin America with Voces para un Cervantes (Voices for a Cervantes) to download on computers and ebook tablets. The collection “brings together interviews that this newspaper has undertaken … Continue reading “Voices of the Cervantes / Miguel Iturria Savon”
[In this part of an unedited interview, which I don’t know when it will be published, I respond to the question: “Ciego de Ávila: Love or scorn?”] I have tried to invent the province lovingly, although for that I had to give a primary form to that love without obligation until it was more or … Continue reading “Huge Hell Whether it Works or Not (For the Poetry of the ’90s) / Francis Sánchez”
Dear Desideri, Receive once more a warm embrace from this friend “beyond the capital.” I welcome your fair challenge to the title of “GROUP” being applied to the large and diverse number of participants in the current debate, and the last paragraphs, about our “culture of spectacle” (and their “controls”), motivate me even more. But … Continue reading “Messages from José Rojas Bez / POLEMICA: The 2007 Intellectual Debate”
I do not think there is better way to weigh the worth or the worthlessness of the media in a country, than to carefully analyze what they themselves do. Like few other jobs in the world, journalism has a peculiarity which at times is its own worst enemy: its raison d’etre is public consumption. No … Continue reading “Orphaned From Journalism (Part 3, Final) / Ernesto Morales Licea”