This is the riveting story of a family's trip to their native land of Cuba. In 1998, the author was informed of his grandmother's terminal illness. Curious to unravel the mystery that for many years has enshrouded Cuba, he convinced his mother and aunt to accompany him and revisit their native land, the country they had left behind forty and twenty years, respectively. This book, part diary, part memoir, is based on this memorable and nostalgic trip. We are taken to Santiago de Cuba and to Boniato, a small town on the outskirts of the city rumored to have been built atop an old Indian cemetery. Along the way, we meet colorful characters and eccentric family members set against a rich background of folklore, local color and politics: we meet the author's aunt Mimi who as a girl thought a cow was her mother; his great grandmother who died of a stroke after arguing with a flock of pigeons; and even ghosts rumored to haunt his small family house in Boniato.
"This book tells readers: tracing the classical music networks that Cuban composers cultivated between 1940 and 1991 through examining compositions, ensembles, and cultural institutions with a microhistorical approach. It sets the foundation for investigating how aesthetics and politics intersected in the case studies explored throughout the book: individual points of view largely determined the degree to which composers engaged in various local and international artistic networks; and these networks were constantly being nurtured and shaped by their actors, who also had to contend with national and global political and economic circumstances. This chapter provides readers with working definitions of key concepts: modernism, avant-garde, experimentalism, and vanguardia. Key figures Fernando Ortiz and Alejo Carpentier and their contributions to the intellectual milieu that Cuban composers inhabited -especially the concepts of transculturation and lo real maravilloso, respectively-are also discussed. It contextualizes the book within existing scholarship on 20th-century classical music of the Americas, Eastern Europe, and the Cold War, as well as those dealing with Cuban music and Cuban studies more broadly"--
Music and tourism, both integral to the culture and livelihood of the circum-Caribbean region, have until recently been approached from disparate disciplinary perspectives. Scholars who specialize in tourism studies typically focus on issues such as economic policy, sustainability, and political implications; music scholars are more likely to concentrate on questions of identity, authenticity, neo-colonialism, and appropriation. Although the insights generated by these paths of scholarship have long been essential to study of the region, Sun, Sea, and Sound turns its attention to the dynamics and interrelationships between tourism and music throughout the region. Editors Timothy Rommen and Daniel T. Neely bring together a group of leading scholars from the fields of ethnomusicology, anthropology, mobility studies, and history to develop and explore a framework - termed music touristics - that considers music in relation to the wide range of tourist experiences that have developed in the region. Over the course of eleven chapters, the authors delve into an array of issues including the ways in which countries such as Jamaica and Cuba have used music to distinguish themselves within the international tourism industry, the tourism surrounding music festivals in St. Lucia and New Orleans, the intersections between music and sex tourism in Brazil, and spirituality tourism in Cuba. An indispensable resource for the study of music and tourism in global perspective, Sun, Sea, and Sound is essential reading for scholars and students across disciplines interested in the Caribbean region.
"Couch hits on an improbable, even fantastic premise, and then rigorously hews to the logic that it generates, keeping it afloat (at times literally) to the end."—Los Angeles Times "Delightfully lighthearted writing. . . . Occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, the enthusiastic prose carries readers through sporadic dark moments . . . Parzybok’s quirky humor recalls the flaws and successes of early Douglas Adams."—Publishers Weekly "The book succeeds as a conceptual art piece, a literary travelogue, and a fantastical quest.” —Willamette Week "Hundreds of writers have slavishly imitated—or outright ripped off—Tolkien in ways that connoisseurs of other genres would consider shameless. What Parzybok has done here in adapting the same old song to a world more familiar to the reader is to revive the genre and make it relevant again"—The Stranger “Beyond the good old-fashioned story, Couch meditates on heroism and history, but above all, it’s an argument for shifting your life around every now and then, for getting off the couch and making something happen.” —The L Magazine “Elevates this common piece of furniture from the stuff of everyday magic to something much more powerful.” —Jessica Schubert McCarthy, The Daily Evergreen "Couch follows the quirky journey of Thom, Erik, and Tree as they venture into the unknown at the behest of a magical, orange couch, which has its own plan for their previously boring lives. Parzybok's colorful characters, striking humor, and eccentric magical realism offer up an adventuresome read."—Christian Crider, Inkwood Books, Tampa, FL "This funny novel of furniture moving gone awry is a magical realism quest for modern times. Parzybok's touching story explores the aimlessness of our culture, a society of jobs instead of callings, replete with opportunities and choices but without the philosophies and vocations we need to make meaningful decisions."—Josh Cook, Porter Square Books, Cambridge, MA "A lot of people are looking for magic in the world today, but only Benjamin Parzybok thought to check the sofa, which is, I think, the place it’s most likely to be found. Couch is a slacker epic: a gentle, funny book that ambles merrily from Coupland to Tolkien, and gives couch-surfing (among other things) a whole new meaning.”—Paul La Farge "One of the strangest road novels you'll ever read. It's a funny and fun book, and it's also a very smart book. Fans of Tom Robbins or Christopher Moore should enjoy this."—Handee Books "It is an upholstered Odyssey unlike any other you are likely to read. It is funny, confusing in places, wild and anarchic. It is part Quixote, part Murakami, part Tom Robbins, part DFS showroom. It has cult hit written all over it."—Scott, Me and My Big Mouth
Voyage, Discovery & Pirates: these are three integral parts of Caribbean history. Inspired by a book written by Marco polo who was a great explorer of 12th century, a young admiral named Christopher Columbus set up sails in Atlantic sea in 1492 in search of an unknown world. This voyage made him the greatest explorer of mankind and changed the course of history forever After reading a couple of paragraphs from Columbus's published Logbook and searching through the facts of his historical voyages, I got inspired to visit some of those places which he discovered during his explorations. In my trip first I went to Bahama, then to Dominican Republic( Hispaniola) followed by Cuba and Jamaica. I also travelled and stayed in two other pristine Caribbean islands- St Lucia and Grand Cayman which too were discovered by Columbus in his subsequent voyages. In my trips to various islands, I came across an open-air museum ( Columbus Park) in Jamaica as well as an underwater museum for sunken ships in Grand Cayman. In this book, I have described my personal travel experience to all the tourist attractions and adventure stuff in these island countries and relevant historical facts with Columbus I attempted to inspire my readers to visit Caribbean islands , admire the natural beauty and appreciate Columbus’s contribution into this marvellous world of islands
Chosen for the 2016 Silicon Valley Reads program. "Parzybok does this thing where you think, 'this is fun!' and then you are charmed, saddened, and finally changed by what you have read. It's like jujitsu storytelling."—Maureen F. McHugh, author of After the Apocalypse In drought-stricken Portland, Oregon, a Robin Hood-esque water thief is caught on camera redistributing an illegal truckload of water to those in need. Nicknamed Maid Marian—real name: Renee, a twenty-something barista and eternal part-time college student—she is an instant folk hero. Renee rides her swelling popularity and the public's disgust at how the city has abandoned its people, raises an army . . . and secedes a quarter of the city. Even as Maid Marian and her compatriots build their community one neighbor at a time, they are making powerful enemies amongst the city government and the National Guard. Sherwood is an idealistic dream too soon caught in a brutal fight for survival. Sherwood Nation is the story of the rise and fall of a micronation within a city. It is a love story, a war story, a grand social experiment, a treatise on hacking and remaking government, on freedom and necessity, on individualism and community. Benjamin Parzybok is the author of the novel Couch and has been the creator/co-creator of many other projects, including Gumball Poetry, The Black Magic Insurance Agency (city-wide, one night alternate reality game), and Project Hamad. He lives in Portland with the artist Laura Moulton and their two kids. He blogs at secret.ideacog.
Cuban Studies has been published annually by the University of Pittsburgh Press since 1985. Founded in 1970, it is the preeminent journal for scholarly work on Cuba. Each volume includes articles in both English and Spanish, a large book review section, and an exhaustive compilation of recent works in the field.
Tria Giovan first traveled to Cuba in 1990. Over the next six years she took twelve month-long trips, traversing the island numerous times, and making over 25,000 images. Immersing herself in Cuba's history, literature and politics, she photographed interiors of homes and businesses, city streets, rural landscapes, signs and billboards, and, most of all, the people, creating a compelling body of work that captures the subtleties and layered complexities of day-to-day Cuba born from complete engagement and informed perspective. Cuba The Elusive Island published by Harry N. Abrams in 1996--a collector's item--first brought together 100 of these images, along with a selection of writings by some of Cuba's most important writers. Twenty years later, Giovan re-edited the images, while working to preserve the original 6 x 9 color negatives. Through this intensive re-examination, a new more complex view of the historical significance of this work has emerged. Images previously disregarded or missed now stand out as a record of elements that no longer exist and one of a Cuba poised on the brink of change. The 120 selected images featured in The Cuba Archive , many of which have never been shown, reveal Cuba at a pivotal point in its storied and fascinating history, and bear witness to an inimitable, resilient and complex country and people.
This book deals with Chinese immigrants' role in the struggle for Cuban liberation and in Cuba's twentieth-century revolutionary social movement; the history of the Chinese economy in Cuba; and the Chinese contribution to Cuban music, painting, food, sport, and language. The centerpiece of the book is a translation of a study by Mauro Garc a Triana and Pedro Eng Herrera on the history of the Chinese presence in Cuba. Over many years, Garc a and Eng have collaborated closely on scholarly research on the Chinese contribution to Cuban life and politics, although their work is not widely known. Both are well equipped for such an enterprise: Eng as a Cuban of Chinese descent and a participant in the ethnic-Chinese revolutionary movement in Cuba, starting in the 1950s; Garc a as a participant in the struggle against Batista and Cuban Ambassador to China during the period of the Cultural Revolution. The study is supplemented by an extensive collection of archival photographs and of paintings on Cuban-Chinese themes by Pedro Eng, who is not just a chronicler of the community but a well-known worker-artist who paints in a style described by commentators as "naive." The volume has three appendices: excerpts from the Cuba Commission's 1877 report on Chinese emigration to Cuba; the rebel leader Gonzalo de Quesada y Ar stegui's pamphlet "The Chinese and Cuban Independence," translated from his book Mi primera ofrenda (My first offering), first published in 1892; and the chapter on "Coolie Life in Cuba" from Duvon Clough Corbitt's Study of the Chinese in Cuba, 1847-1947 (Wilmore 1971).
