As an island—a geographical space with mutable and porous borders—Cuba has never been a fixed cultural, political, or geographical entity. Migration and exile have always informed the Cuban experience, and loss and displacement have figured as central preoccupations among Cuban artists and intellectuals. A major expression of this experience is the unconventional, multi-generational, itinerant, and ongoing art exhibit CAFÉ: The Journeys of Cuban Artists. In Cuban Artists Across the Diaspora, Andrea O'Reilly Herrera focuses on the CAFÉ project to explore Cuba's long and turbulent history of movement and rupture from the perspective of its visual arts and to meditate upon the manner in which one reconstitutes and reinvents the self in the context of diaspora.
Approaching the Cafeteros' art from a cultural studies perspective, O'Reilly Herrera examines how the history of Cuba informs their work and establishes their connections to past generations of Cuban artists. In interviews with more than thirty artists, including José Bedia, María Brito, Leandro Soto, Glexis Novoa, Baruj Salinas, and Ana Albertina Delgado, O'Reilly Herrera also raises critical questions regarding the many and sometimes paradoxical ways diasporic subjects self-affiliate or situate themselves in the narratives of scattering and displacement. She demonstrates how the Cafeteros' artmaking involves a process of re-rooting, absorption, translation, and synthesis that simultaneously conserves a series of identifiable Cuban cultural elements while re-inscribing and transforming them in new contexts.
An important contribution to both diasporic and transnational studies and discussions of contemporary Cuban art, Cuban Artists Across the Diaspora ultimately testifies to the fact that a long tradition of Cuban art is indeed flourishing outside the island.

Cuban Artists Across the Diaspora: Setting the Tent Against the House (Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Series in Latin American and Latino Art and Culture)

Arts & Photography

O’Reilly Herrera, Andrea

History & Criticism

University of Texas Press

Longing for their lost homeland unites Cuban exiles and their children, many of whom have never seen the Island. Yet as decades pass and the hope of "next year in Cuba" fades, the Cuban American community has had to forge new understandings of where "home" is and what it means to be "Cuban," "American," and/or "Cuban American." The testimonies gathered in this book offer over one hundred perspectives on the Cuban diaspora and on what it means to be Cuban in exile. Through narratives, interviews, creative writings, letters, journal entries, recipes, photographs, and paintings, Cubans from various waves of the migration and their descendants piece together a complex mosaic of the exile experience and diasporic identity.In her introduction, Andrea O'Reilly Herrera describes how she conceived the project and chose the contributors, including both unknown and established artists and writers such as Gustavo Pérez Firmat, Sylvia Curbelo, Pablo Medina, Lourdes Gil, Ricardo Pau-Llosa, Heberto Padilla, and José Kozer. The contributors' diverse and sometimes conflicting voices offer a more inclusive and complex understanding of Cuban American identity and the various Cuban "presences" residing throughout the United States. Likewise, they overthrow a perceived "hierarchy of suffering" among Cuban Americans, which purports to dictate who can and cannot speak authentically about exile and loss, as well as what form their expression can take.

ReMembering Cuba: Legacy of a Diaspora

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Longing for their lost homeland unites Cuban exiles and their children, many of whom have never seen the Island. Yet as decades pass and the hope of "next year in Cuba" fades, the Cuban American community has had to forge new understandings of where "home" is and what it means to be "Cuban," "American," and/or "Cuban American." The testimonies gathered in this book offer over one hundred perspectives on the Cuban diaspora and on what it means to be Cuban in exile. Through narratives, interviews, creative writings, letters, journal entries, recipes, photographs, and paintings, Cubans from various waves of the migration and their descendants piece together a complex mosaic of the exile experience and diasporic identity.
In her introduction, Andrea O'Reilly Herrera describes how she conceived the project and chose the contributors, including both unknown and established artists and writers such as Gustavo Pérez Firmat, Sylvia Curbelo, Pablo Medina, Lourdes Gil, Ricardo Pau-Llosa, Heberto Padilla, and José Kozer. The contributors' diverse and sometimes conflicting voices offer a more inclusive and complex understanding of Cuban American identity and the various Cuban "presences" residing throughout the United States. Likewise, they overthrow a perceived "hierarchy of suffering" among Cuban Americans, which purports to dictate who can and cannot speak authentically about exile and loss, as well as what form their expression can take.

History

Americas

THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES chronicles the lives of several generations of Cuban women. The story focuses on Margarita, an exile in the United States, who struggles to come to terms with her divided identity, a past she has suppressed, and her failure to share her heritage with her children. The novel explores the ways in which culture and tradition have been preserved and passed down to Cuban Americans and portrays the cultural fragmentation and deep sense of loss that Cubans living in exile and their children (who may never have set foot on Cuban soil) continue to experience.

The Pearl of the Antilles

Literature & Fiction

United States

Bilingual Pr

THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES chronicles the lives of several generations of Cuban women. The story focuses on Margarita, an exile in the United States, who struggles to come to terms with her divided identity, a past she has suppressed, and her failure to share her heritage with her children. The novel explores the ways in which culture and tradition have been preserved and passed down to Cuban Americans and portrays the cultural fragmentation and deep sense of loss that Cubans living in exile and their children (who may never have set foot on Cuban soil) continue to experience.

Bilingual Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by O’Reilly Herrera, Andrea. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by O’Reilly Herrera, Andrea

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by O’Reilly Herrera, Andrea. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Cuban Artists Across the Diaspora: Setting the Tent Against the House (Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Series in Latin American and Latino Art and Culture)

Cuban Artists Across the Diaspora: Setting the Tent Against the House (Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Series in Latin American and Latino Art and Culture)

ReMembering Cuba: Legacy of a Diaspora

ReMembering Cuba: Legacy of a Diaspora

The Pearl of the Antilles

The Pearl of the Antilles