Afro Cuban Short Stories By Lydia Cabrera 1900 1991

Afro-Cuban Short Stories by Lydia Cabrera (1900-1991)

Lydia Cabrera (1900-1991), an upper-class white Cuban intellectual, spent many years traveling through Cuba collecting oral histories, stories, and music from Cubans of African descent. Her work is commonly viewed as an extension of the work of her famous brother-in-law, Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz, who initiated the study of Afro-Cubans and the concept of transculturation. Here, Edna Rodriguez-Mangual challenges this perspective, proposing that Cabrera's work offers an alternative to the hegemonizing national myth of Cuba articulated by Ortiz and others. Rodriguez-Mangual examines Cabrera's ethnographic essays and short stories in context. By blurring fact and fiction, anthropology and literature, Cabrera defied the scientific discourse used by other anthropologists. She wrote of Afro-Cubans not as objects but as subjects, and in her writings, whiteness, instead of blackness, is gazed upon as the "other." As Rodriguez-Mangual demonstrates, Cabrera rewrote the history of Cuba and its culture through imaginative means, calling into question the empirical basis of anthropology and placing Afro-Cuban contributions at the center of the literature that describes the Cuban nation and its national identity.

As much a storyteller as an ethnographer, Lydia Cabrera was captivated by a strange and magical new world revealed to her by her Afro-Cuban friends in early twentieth-century Havana. In Afro-Cuban Tales this world comes to teeming life, introducing English-speaking readers to a realm of tenuous boundaries between the natural and the supernatural, deities and mortals, the spiritual and the seemingly inanimate. Here readers will find a vibrant, imaginative record of African culture transplanted to Cuba and transformed over time, a passionate and subversive alternative to the dominant Western culture of the Americas. In this charmed realm of myth and legend, imaginative flights, and hard realities, Cabrera shows us a world turned upside down. In this domain guinea hens can make dour Asturians and the king of Spain dance; little fat cooking pots might prepare their own meals; the pope can send encyclicals about pumpkins; and officials can be defeated by the shrewdness of turtles. The first English translation of one of the most important writers on African culture in the Americas, the collection provides a fascinating view of how African traditions, myths, stories, and religions traveled to the New World—of how, in their tales, Africans in the Americas created a New World all their own.

This handbook sets out the processes and products of ′digital′ research. It is a theoretical and practical guide on how to undertake and navigate advanced research in the arts, humanities and social sciences. Topics covered include: - how to make research more accessible - the use of search engines and other sources to determine the scope of work - research training for students - what will theses, dissertations and research reports look like in ten years′ time? - the storing and archiving of such research - ethics and methodologies in the field - intercultural issues The editors focus on advances in arts and practice-based doctorates, and their application in other fields and disciplines. The contributions chart new territory for universities, research project directors, supervisors and research students regarding the nature and format of Masters and doctoral work, as well as research projects. This handbook is an essential reference for researchers, supervisors and administrators on how to conduct and evaluate research projects in a digital and multimodal age. Richard Andrews is Professor in English, Faculty of Children and Learning, Institute of Education. Erik Borg is a Senior Lecturer at Coventry University′s Centre for Academic Writing. Stephen Boyd Davis is Research Leader in the School of Design, Royal College of Art. Myrrh Domingo is Visiting Assistant Professor in English Education and Literacy Education at New York University. Jude England is Head of Social Sciences at the British Library.

Ever a trickster, the anthropologist, writer and activist Lydia Cabrera (1899-1991) blurred the lines between historian and storyteller, reality and fiction.Finding their initial context--and audience--in the avant-garde milieu of interwar Paris, Cabrera's stories based on Afro-Cuban myths and folktales continue to inform and inspire generations of artists, writers, and scholars.When the rise of fascism forced Cabrera to return to her native Cuba, she devoted herself to the preservation of Afro-Cuban cultures, a lifework that culminated in her scholarly and spiritual masterpiece, El Monte, in which the Cuban wilderness is brilliantly animated by the voices and rituals of the dead.The first English volume dedicated to her work, Lydia Cabrera: Between the Sum and the Parts introduces her substantial legacy to a new audience. Includes a facsimile of the illuminated manuscript, Arere Marekén (1933), a collaboration between Lydia Cabrera and Alexandra Exter.'Because cultural homogenization is nothing less than cultural extinction, Lydia Cabrera's work models a strategy for survival in our own period, in which the spectre of extinction has become ever more present. Cabrera dedicated herself fully to her work in historically difficult circumstances and in involuntary exile, so it is disconcerting that her work remains ignored. Her legacy deserves revisiting.' -- Hans Ulrich ObristPublished on occasion of the exhibition, Lydia Cabrera and Édouard Glissant: Trembling Thinking at the Americas Society, New York (9 October 2018 - 12 January 2019). Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Gabriela Rangel and Asad Raza.Co-published with Americas Society.

Providing a detailed historical overview of Hispanic literature in the United States from the Spanish colonial period to the present, this extensive chronology provides the context within which such writers as Sandra Cisneros, Rodolfo Anaya, and Oscar Hijuelos have worked. Hispanic literature in the United States is covered from the Spanish colonial period to the present. A detailed historical overview and a separate survey of Hispanic drama provide researchers and general readers with indispensable information and insight into Hispanic literature. An extensive chronology traces the development of Hispanic literature and culture in the United States from 1492 to 2002, providing the context within which such Hispanic writers such as Sandra Cisneros, Rodolfo Anaya, and Oscar Hijuelos have worked. Topics include an overview and chronology of Hispanic literature in the United States, a who's who of Hispanic authors, significant trends, movements, and themes, publishing trends, an overview of Hispanic drama, adn the 100 essential Hispanic literary works. Biographical entries describe the careers, importance, and major works of notable Hispanic novelists, poets, and playwrights writing in English or Spanish. A comprehensive, up-to-date bibliography lists primary sources. Essays detail the most important past and current trends in Hispanic literature, including bilingualism, Chicano literature, children's literature, exile literature, folklore, immigrant literature, Nuyorican literature, poetry, and women and feminism in Hispanic literature. More than 100 exceptional illustrations of writers, plays in performance, and first editions of important works are included.

Many twentieth-century Spanish American writers sought to give voice to their countries' native inhabitants. Drawing upon anthropology and literary theory, this book explores the representation of orality by major Spanish American anthropologist-writers: Lydia Cabrera, Jose Maria Arguedas, and Miguel Barnet. These writers played a quintessential role of the Spanish American writer from colonial times to the present: they inscribed the mythical world of a vanishing Other by creating a poetic effect of orality in their ethnographies and narratives. This book argues that supposed differences between oral and written culture are rhetorical devices in the elaboration of literature, specifically modern fiction in Spanish America. Fictionalization of the oral requires adherence to the theory of a great divide between orality and literacy. Because the texts considered here are predicated on the ideality of speech, a contradiction underlies their shared desire to salvage oral tradition. This book explores how anthropologist-writers have addressed this compelling dilemma in their anthropological and narrative writings. at Tufts University.