Events about Cuban cultural affairs in Miami: One academic lecture, one book presentation and a music and performance festival

Contemporary Cuban Culture: Notes on Alternative Thinking

Start:	Thursday, Aug. 28, 2014, 12:30PM
End:	Thursday, Aug. 28, 2014, 02:00PM
Venue:	FIU Modesto A. Maidique Campus, Green Library 220

Book Presentation: "Cartografía corporal"

Start:	Thursday, Aug. 28, 2014, 08:00PM
End:	Thursday, Aug. 28, 2014, 09:30PM
Venue:	Books & Books, 265 Aragon Avenue, Coral Gables

Latest books by three women thinkers on Cuba. Odette Casamayor, Jacqueline Loss and Lilian Guerra. Highly Recommended.

Casamayor, Odette. Utopía, distopía e ingravidez: reconfiguraciones cosmológicas en la narrativa postsoviética cubana. Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2013. Print

Book description by the author:

¿Cómo afrontar los desafíos existenciales de la Cuba post-Soviética? ¿Cómo el cubano reacciona ante la crisis identitaria, la incertidumbre y pérdida de confianza en la Historia y el futuro, provocados por el colapso del socialismo en Europa del Este, la repentina exposición al capitalismo global y la aceleración de los movimientos migratorios? Las respuestas se leen en la ficción escrita en la isla tras la Caída del Muro de Berlín en 1989: son la reinvención de la utopía, su negación distópica y la ingravidez ética. Este libro las examina en narradores contemporáneos muy diferentes estética, ética e ideológicamente, como Abilio Estévez, Wendy Guerra, Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, Leonardo Padura, Orlando Pardo Lazo, Senel Paz, Antonio J. Ponte, Ena L. Portela. Evitando rígidas determinantes generacionales, se considera también cómo sus propuestas retoman o desvían derroteros narrativos establecidos antes de los noventa por Carpentier, Lezama Lima, Piñera y Reinaldo Arenas, canónicos autores. 

Utopía, distopía e ingravidez es el primer libro en investigar cómo la ficción literaria recrea a los cubanos reorganizando su existencia frente a la crisis de lo que llamo la cosmología de la revolución cubana . La actualidad post-soviética es aquí analizada más allá de sus condicionantes estrictamente políticas, económicas y sociales, que suelen dominar la literatura crítica sobre Cuba. Examinada en la encrucijada de la experiencia socialista y la pertenencia al llamado Tercer Mundo , se evita además redundar en una supuesta excepcionalidad cubana. De existir, tal particularidad puede considerarse únicamente a partir de la visibilidad que en esta sociedad adquieren los avatares existenciales del sujeto contemporáneo global. En América Latina, Cuba representaría tan sólo el sitio en el que, concretamente, la saga de la revolución aporta mayor nitidez a tales procesos."

Loss, Jacqueline. Dreaming in Russian: The Cuban Soviet Imaginary. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013. Print. Book description by the author:  The specter of the Soviet Union lingers in Cuba, yet until now there has been no book-length work on the ways Cubans process their country’s relationship with the Soviet bloc. Dreaming in Russian at last brings into the light the reality that for nearly three decades, the Soviet Union subsidized the island economically, intervened in military matters, and exported distinct pedagogical and cultural models to Cuba. Drawing on interviews with Cuban artists and intellectuals, as well as treasures from cinematographic and bibliographic archives, Jacqueline Loss delivers the first book to show that Cuba remembers and retains many aspects of the Soviet era, far from shedding those cultural facets as relics of the Cold War. Weaving together intriguing, seldom-seen images, Dreaming in Russian showcases the ways in which Cuba’s relationship to its Soviet benefactors lingered after the disintegration of the U.S.S.R. in 1991. Analyzing numerous literary texts and works of visual art, Loss also incorporates aspects of architecture, popular culture, the space race, and other strands to create a captivating new perspective on Cuban society. Among the luminaries featured are poet Reina María Rodríguez, writer Antonio José Ponte, visual artist Tonel, and novelist Wendy Guerra. A departure from traditional cultural history, Loss’s approach instead presents a kaleidoscopic series of facets, reflecting the hybrid nature of the self-images that emerged in the aftermath of the Soviet aegis. As speculations about Cuba’s future under Fidel Castro’s heir apparent continue, the portrait that emerges in Dreaming in Russian is both timely and mesmerizing.

			Guerra, Lillian. Visions of Power in Cuba: Revolution, Redemption, and Resistance, 1959-1971. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2012. Print. Book description by the author: In the tumultuous first decade of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro and other leaders saturated the media with altruistic images of themselves in a campaign to win the hearts of Cuba's six million citizens. In Visions of Power in Cuba, Lillian Guerra argues that these visual representations explained rapidly occurring events and encouraged radical change and mutual self-sacrifice.Mass rallies and labor mobilizations of unprecedented scale produced tangible evidence of what Fidel Castro called "unanimous support" for a revolution whose "moral power" defied U.S. control. Yet participation in state-orchestrated spectacles quickly became a requirement for political inclusion in a new Cuba that policed most forms of dissent. Devoted revolutionaries who resisted disastrous economic policies, exposed post-1959 racism, and challenged gender norms set by Cuba's one-party state increasingly found themselves marginalized, silenced, or jailed.  Using previously unexplored sources, Guerra focuses on the lived experiences of citizens, including peasants, intellectuals, former prostitutes, black activists, and filmmakers, as they struggled to author their own scripts of revolution by resisting repression, defying state-imposed boundaries, and working for anti-imperial redemption in a truly free Cuba.