The Cuba Reader: History, Culture, Politics
The Cuba Reader combines songs, paintings, photographs, poems, short stories, speeches, cartoons, government reports and proclamations, and pieces by historians, journalists, and others. Most of these are by Cubans, and many appear for the first time in English. The writings and speeches of José Martí, Fernando Ortiz, Fidel Castro, Alejo Carpentier, Che Guevera, and Reinaldo Arenas appear alongside the testimonies of slaves, prostitutes, doctors, travelers, and activists. Some selections examine health, education, Catholicism, and santería; others celebrate Cuba's vibrant dance, music, film, and literary cultures. The pieces are grouped into chronological sections. Each section and individual selection is preceded by a brief introduction by the editors.
The volume presents a number of pieces about twentieth-century Cuba, including the events leading up to and following Castro's January 1959 announcement of revolution. It provides a look at Cuba in relation to the rest of the world: the effect of its revolution on Latin America and the Caribbean, its alliance with the Soviet Union from the 1960s until the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989, and its tumultuous relationship with the United States. The Cuba Reader also describes life in the periodo especial following the cutoff of Soviet aid and the tightening of the U.S. embargo.
For students, travelers, and all those who want to know more about the island nation just ninety miles south of Florida, The Cuba Reader is an invaluable introduction.
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Aviva Chomsky is Professor of History and Coordinator of Latin American Studies at Salem State College. She is the author of West Indian Workers and the United Fruit Company in Costa Rica, 1870-1940 and coeditor of Identity and Struggle at the Margins of the Nation-State: The Laboring Peoples of Central America and the Hispanic Caribbean (published by Duke University Press).
Barry Carr is Director of the Institute of Latin American Studies at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of Marxism and Communism in Twentieth-Century Mexico and coeditor of The Latin American Left: From the Fall of Allende to Perestroika.
Pamela Maria Smorkaloff is Director of Latin American and Latino Studies and Assistant Professor of Spanish at Montclair State University. She is the author of Cuban Writers on and off the Island: Contemporary Narrative Fiction and Readers and Writers in Cuba: A Social History of Print Culture, 1830s-1990s and editor of If I Could Write This in Fire: An Anthology of Literature from the Caribbean.
"[A] crash course in Cuban history. If you're looking for a single (hefty) volume to get you up to speed about the past 500 years of Cuban politics and culture, this is it." --Julie Schwietert Collazo "The Guardian "
"[T]he editors should be congratulated for their Herculean effort. The reader will be most useful for undergraduate courses where it will provide students with an impressive overview of the Cuban experience over the last five centuries. In fact, anyone interested in obtaining a comprehensive and multifaceted firsthand account of Cuban history will benefit from this book."--John J. Dwyer "The Americas "
"This Reader provides a wonderfully eclectic selection of writings from and about Cuba. . . . [A] very useful resource for the teaching of courses relating to Cuba, providing a taster of many aspects of the island's history that should encourage those who dip into it to come away with a more nuanced understanding of an island that has been plagued by caricature."--Jonathan Curry-Machado "Journal of Latin American Studies "
"The Cuba Reader offers a splendid overview of the Cuban experience, past and present, through a dazzling array of points of view. The voices of participants and observers and perspectives on the extraordinary and the commonplace--with imagery conveyed by way of photography and poetry, through the lyric of music and the nuance of the novel--make for a compelling collection of material. The very fullness of its vision makes The Cuba Reader an indispensable book for courses--of every academic discipline--on Cuba."--Louis A. Pérez, Jr., author of On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality, and Culture
"[A] classic. The editors of this book and their many accomplices deserve nothing but praise for producing the best introduction to Cuba one can possibly find."
--Gavin O'Toole "Latin American Review of Books "
"[An] ambitious and impressive anthology, a sweeping collection of source materials by and about Cubans both on the island and living in other countries. The editors . . . have wisely chosen songs, paintings, photographs, short stories, essays, speeches, government reports, cartoons and newspaper articles that span Cuban history. . . . What The Cuba Reader does extraordinarily well is to reveal the nuances and complexity of the Cuban experience. All shades of politics are here, and they infuse Cuban dance, music, film and religion."
--Susan Fernandez "Miami Herald "
