Cuba

Idea of a Nation Displaced

Edited by Andrea O'Reilly Herrera

Subjects: Hispanic Studies
Series: SUNY series in Latin American and Iberian Thought and Culture
Paperback : 9780791472002, 372 pages, June 2008
Hardcover : 9780791471999, 372 pages, August 2007

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Table of contents

Acknowledgments

“Hablando en Diásporas” / “Speaking in Diasporas”
Lourdes Gil

Introduction
Andrea O’Reilly Herrera

“Exilio es olvido” / “Exile Is a Forgetting”
Pablo Medina

Part I. We Are Here, There, and Everywhere, A Nation Displaced

“Transplantado” / “Transplanted”
Felipe Lázaro

1. Memory, Politics, and Diaspora: Cubans in Spain
Mette Louise Berg

2. Cuban Exiles in France
William Navarrete

3. Puerto Rican Cubanness: Reconfiguring Caribbean Imaginaries
Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel

4. The Cuban Population of the United States: An Introduction
María Cristina García

5. Different Diasporas: Cubans in Venezuela, 1959–1998
Holly Ackerman

6. “Hebrew with a Cuban Accent”: Jewbans in the Diaspora
Caroline Bettinger-López

7. In Search of Chino Latinos in Diaspora: Cuban Chinese in New York City
Lok Chun Debra Siu

8. “We All Lived Here Together”: The Hidden Topic of Race between White and Black Cubans in Tampa
Susan D. Greenbaum and Linda M. Callejas

Part II.  Identities in Motion

“El rostro de una nación” / “The Face of a Nation”
Iraida Iturralde

9. Identity and Diaspora: Cuban Culture at the Crossroads
Adriana Méndez Rodenas

10. Networks, Remittances, and Family Restaurants: The Cuban Diaspora from a Transnational Perspective
Jorge Duany

11. The Politics of Mis-ReMembering: History, Imagination and the Recovery of the Lost Generation”
Andrea O’Reilly Herrera

12. In Two or More (Dis)Places: Articulating a Marginal Experience of the Cuban Diaspora
Eliana Rivero

13. A Cuban-Chinese Familia
Emily Lo

14. In Search of the Palm Tree: An Afternoon with Tania León
Interview by Iraida Iturralde

Part III. The Space between Memory and History: Cultural Transformation in the Diaspora “Book of Heather”
Maya Islas

15. Diaspora and Memory in Cuban Literature
Rafael Rojas

16. “Fertile Multiplicities”: Zoé Valdés and the Writers of the ’90s Generation
Isabel Alvarez Borland

17. “A Homecoming without a Home”: Recent U.S. Cuban Writing of Diaspora
Claudia Sadowski-Smith

18. “The Dream of Paradise”: Homosexuality and Lesbianism in Contemporary Cuban-American Literature
Francisco Soto

19. “Defying Liminality”: The Journeys of Cuban Artists in the Diaspora
Andrea O’Reilly Herrera

Appendix A: List of Artists
Appendix B: Café Cubano a La Grisel

20. Framing the Cuban Diaspora: Representation and Dialogue in Recent Filmic Productions
Raúl Rubio

21. Music and Nation
Antonio Benítez-Rojo

22. The Inheritance
Carlos Victoria

Epilogue
Andrea O’Reilly Herrera

“Cruza Fronteras”
Virgil Suárez

Contributors
Index

Internationally renowned scholars address the Cuban diaspora from multiple perspectives and locations.

Description

In Cuba, internationally renowned artists, philosophers, and writers reflect on the idea of a nation displaced. Featuring contributions from Isabel Alvarez Borland, Antonio Benítez-Rojo, María Cristina García, William Navarrete, Eliana Rivero, Rafael Rojas, and Carlos Victoria, as well as many others, Cuba is a rich collection of essays, testimonials, and interviews that reveal the complex, often antagonistic cultural and political debates coexisting within the Cuban exile population. As a multivoiced text, Cuba formulates a deeper understanding of diasporic identity, and broadens the discussion of the manner in which Cuban cultural identity and nationhood have been constructed, negotiated, and transformed by physical and cultural displacement.

Andrea O'Reilly Herrera is Professor of Literature and Director of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. She is the author of Pearl of the Antilles and the editor of ReMembering Cuba: Legacy of a Diaspora.

Reviews

"The multidisciplinary approaches … will appeal to a variety of readers interested in the rich cultural production by Cuban exiles everywhere." — CHOICE

"This book is outstanding: it addresses Cuban diaspora from multiple locations; it goes beyond the usual reductionist perspectives; and it reflects the community's diversity by contesting prevalent media, scholarly, and stereotypical representations." — Delia Poey, author of Latino American Literature in the Classroom: The Politics of Transformation

"Multiple voices reflect on Cubanía (Cubanness), more often than not from a postmodern transcultural perspective. As a result, the book acquires a dynamic, collage effect, impacting the reader intellectually as well as emotionally." — Jorge Febles, University of North Florida