Cultural Traditions In Cuba

A nation with Spanish, African, Asian, and Caribbean roots, Cubas people celebrate their diversity with a range of cultural traditions. From celebrated Cuban music and dance to legends and family customs, this interesting book guides readers through the celebrations and traditions practiced by Cubans throughout each year. Other celebrations include national holidays and Christian observances.

The Spanish had an enormous impact on Cuba's history and culture introducing the Spanish language to the island and Roman Catholicism. Other cultures have also contributed particularly in the area of the arts and food. Cuba the culture features the traditions and celebrations of the country's many different cultural influences.

Who are the people of Cuba? Readers will probe this question through this lively book about the cultural traditions, festivals, music, art, dance, and food of this Caribbean island nation. Analyzing how the country's history has shaped the cultural identity of its people, this comprehensive text sheds light on the unique contributions Cubans have made. Readers also learn that it is the largest island and most populated country in the Caribbean. Each spread features stunning photographs, which make the information pop. This engaging take on curricular social studies concepts is sure to capture readers' attention.

Cuba continues to loom large in U.S. consciousness and politics. Culture and Customs of Cuba is a much-needed resource that gives students and other readers an in-depth view of our important island neighbor. Luis, of Cuban descent, provides detailed, clear insight into the society, religions, customs, media, cinema, literature, performing arts, and art in the context of three interrelated periods in Cuban history: Colonial, the Republic, and Castros Revolution and beyond. The contributions of Cubans in exile are considered an inherent part of Cuban culture and Luis includes them as well.

With this masterful work, Louis A. Perez Jr. transforms the way we view Cuba and its relationship with the United States. On Becoming Cuban is a sweeping cultural history of the sustained encounter between the peoples of the two countries and of the ways that this encounter helped shape Cubans' identity, nationality, and sense of modernity from the early 1850s until the revolution of 1959. Using an enormous range of Cuban and U.S. sources--from archival records and oral interviews to popular magazines, novels, and motion pictures--Perez reveals a powerful web of everyday, bilateral connections between the United States and Cuba and shows how U.S. cultural forms had a critical influence on the development of Cubans' sense of themselves as a people and as a nation. He also articulates the cultural context for the revolution that erupted in Cuba in 1959. In the middle of the twentieth century, Perez argues, when economic hard times and political crises combined to make Cubans painfully aware that their American-influenced expectations of prosperity and modernity would not be realized, the stage was set for revolution.

As American-Cuban relations begin to warm, tourists are rushing to discover the throwback tropical paradise just eighty miles off of the American coast. But even as diplomatic relations are changing and the country opens up to the Western world, Cuba remains a rare and fascinating place. Cuba: A Cultural History tells the story of Cuba’s history through an exploration of its rich and vibrant culture. Rather than offer a timeline of Cuban history or a traditional genre-by-genre history of Cuban culture, Alan West-Durán invites readers to enter Cuban history from the perspective of the island’s uniquely creative cultural forms. He traces the restless island as it ebbs and flows with the power, beauty, and longings of its culture and history. In a world where revolutionary socialism is an almost quaint reminder of the decades-old Cold War, the island nation remains one of the few on the planet guided by a Communist party, still committed to fighting imperialism, opposed to the injustices of globalization, and wedded to the dream of one day building a classless society, albeit in a distant future. But as this book shows, Cuba is more than a struggling socialist country—it is a nation with a complex and turbulent history and a rich and varied culture.

Discusses the religion, festivals, music, art, architecture, language, and literature of Cuba, and includes a Cuban folk tale.