Raining Backwards is an entertaining satire of the Cuban community in Miami, filled with hilarious scenes and characters, including a lovesick girl determined to be a cheerleader for the Miami Dolphins, a poor Cuban American who becomes Pope, another Cuban American who begins a guerrilla war to separate Florida from the Union, and a ditsy plantain-chip magnate.
Twenty-four essays take diverse approaches (thematic, feminist, historicist, cultural materialist, etc.) to the theme of culture (including its expression in literature, art, mass media, etc.) and identity (self, regional, or national) in Latin America (five essays), the Caribbean (ten essays) and Europe (nine essays). Paper edition (unseen), $16.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Transatlantic, Transcultural, and Transnational Dialogues on Identity, Culture, and Migration analyzes the diasporic experiences of migratory and postcolonial subjects through the lenses of cultural studies, critical race theory, narrative theory, and border studies. These narratives cover the United States, the U.S.-Mexico border, the Hispanophone Caribbean, and the Iberian Peninsula and illustrate a shared diasporic experience across the Atlantic. Through a transatlantic, transcultural, and transnational lens, this volume brings together essays on literature, film, and music from disparate geographic areas: Spain, Cuba and Jamaica, the U.S.-Mexico border, and Colombia. Throughout the volume, the contributors explore intertextual transatlantic dialogues, and migratory experiences of diasporic subjects and queer subjectivities. The chapters also examine the use of language to preserve Latinx culture, colonial and Spanish cultural exchanges, border identities, and race, gender, identity, and cultural production. In turn, these diasporic experiences result from transatlantic, transcultural, and transnational phenomena that converge in a globalized society and aid in questioning the artificial boundaries of nation states.
Archival Dissonance in the U.S. Cuban Post-Exile Novel documents a body of emergent US Cuban literature published in Spanish and English beyond the scope and historicity of exile. Focusing on the work of Roberto G. Fernández, Ana Menéndez, and Antonio Benítez Rojo, the book proposes that, rather than reinforce US Cuban exile ethnic identity developed between 1960 and the 1980s, or demonstrate a tendency toward cultural assimilation (“Americanization”) over three generations of writers, the discussed historical novels incorporate Caribbean and Latin American archival sources and interpretive frameworks in order to develop a critical and investigative approach to the politics of Cuban exile historiography. Published before the recent apertura between the US and Cuban governments, these post-exile novels anticipate themes of displacement, migration, and social marginalization as common, rather than exceptional, features of modern (and historical) life, as well as such other current (and historical) topics as gender construction and performance, figurations of race, the commoditization of culture, and urban poverty. The post-exile historical novel points to a future for US Cuban narrative and historiography, in part by investigating and featuring dissonances hidden or unacknowledged in previous Cuban exile historical fiction. The literature studied in this book further reinforces a view of two-way migration between Cuba and the United States as a normal phenomenon predating 1959, and, at the same time, as a likely shape of things to come.
A Cuban refugee raised in Miami, Maria Cristina Garcia presents a comprehensive and revealing account of the unprecedented Cuban migration into South Florida since Fidel Castro came to power. Garcia's exploration of the complicated realm of Cuban American identity sets a new standard in social and cultural history.
This unique anthology highlights the diversity of Latino cultural expressions and points out the distinctive features of the three major Latino populations: Mexican, Puerto Rican and Cuban. It is organized around six central cultural issues: family, religion, community, the arts, (im)migration and exile, and cultural identity. Each chapter focuses on a particular theme by presenting readings from a variety of genres, including short stories, poems, essays, excerpts from novels, a play, photographs, even a few songs and recipes.
This bibliography contains listings and annotations of all novels, anthologies, and short story collections written by the first, 1.5, and second generations of Cuban Americans. This work also contains listings and annotations of all secondary works dealing with this fiction, as well as related memoirs, autobiographies and interviews.
First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company. The aim of this book is to approach Latino fiction from a wider perspective, and to cross the standard critical boundaries between Latino groups in order to focus upon the literary language of a collection of complicated novels and stories.
This groundbreaking collection offers an understanding of why Cuban-American literature and visual art have emerged in the United States and how they are so essentially linked to both Cuban and American cultures. The contributors explore crucial issues pertinent not only to Cuban-American cultural production but also to other immigrant groups—hybrid identities, biculturation, bilingualism, immigration, adaptation, and exile. The complex ways in which Cuban Americans have been able to keep a living memory of Cuba while developing and thriving in America are both intriguing and instructive. These essays, written from a variety of perspectives, range from useful overviews of fictional and visual works of art to close readings of individual texts.
