The University of North Carolina Press

216 pp., 5.5 x 8.5, 5 illus., notes, bibl., index

Envisioning Cuba

Cloth

ISBN  978-0-8078-2887-8

Published: September 2004

Paper

ISBN  978-0-8078-5554-6

Published: September 2004

Lydia Cabrera and the Construction of an Afro-Cuban Cultural Identity

By Edna M. Rodríguez-Mangual

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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 Rodríguez-Mangual challenges this perspective, proposing that Cabrera's work offers an alternative to the hegemonizing national myth of Cuba articulated by Ortiz and others.

Rodríguez-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 Rodríguez-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.

About the Author

Edna M. Rodríguez-Mangual is assistant professor of Spanish at Texas Christian University, where she also teaches courses on Latin American literature, culture, and film.

Reviews

"An important book. . . . Offers an interesting and valuable biographic source for scholars and undergraduate students interested in Caribbean Studies, Cuban culture and literature, [and] the heritage of Africa in Hispanic America. . . . It brings light where knowledge was lacking."
--Latin Americanist

"A genuine success in this work is the way in which the author brings to the fore Cabrera's deep engagement with the Afro-Cuban subject and an investedness in the telling of their stories. . . . A valuable contribution to the study of Caribbean ethnography."
--Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies

"For years I have been waiting for a book that would illuminate Lydia Cabrera's amazing contributions to Afro-Cuban studies. Lydia Cabrera is the most important woman anthropologist Cuba has produced, and yet this is the first book in English to offer a thorough acccount of Cabrera's life and work. A thoughtful, profound, and necessary book."
--Ruth Behar, University of Michigan

"This book makes a significant contribution to the fields of Afro-Hispanism and Cuban studies. Not only does Rodríguez-Mangual present Lydia Cabrera as someone who has surpassed Fernando Ortiz's hegemonic national project, but she also makes Cabrera the true leader of 'transculturation' in Cuba."
--Mariela A. Gutiérrez, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada