Cuba

by Mike Gonzalez

Overview

A literary guide to one of the most fascinating countries in the world—Cuba.

Cuba has always been one of the most compelling places in the world but perhaps never more so than now. With Raoul's promise to resign in 2018, the era of Castroism is all but over and the 2014 US-Cuba rapprochement has opened the country up for the first time to a generation of Americans whose only previous way in was through film and literature. The coming years will undoubtedly bring significant changes to a country that has in many ways been frozen in time. There is no better time for a Cuba literary guide, which challenges some firmly-held western assumptions about the country and shines a light on one of the richest and most deeply embedded literary cultures in the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781788314992
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	06/01/2021
Series:	Literary Guides for Travellers
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	646,786
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Mike Gonzalez is an historian, literary critic and is emeritus professor of Latin American Studies at the University of Glasgow. He writes extensively on Latin America and is the author of The Gathering of Voices: The Twentieth Century Poetry of Latin America, Che Guevara and the Cuban Revolution, Tango: Sex and Rhythm of the City, and A Rebel's Guide to Marx and Barcelona: A Literary Guide for Travellers.

Editorial Reviews

07/02/2021

This book is not a guidebook to Cuba—it doesn't list historical landmarks or sights to see; instead, historian and literary critic Gonzalez (Latin American studies, Univ. of Glasgow) provides background on the country through its literature and arts. Much of Gonzalez's attention is concentrated on Cuba's economy, past and present. He writes that Cuba was known (somewhat reductively) as a place of forbidden vices, sensual and seductive people, rum, cigars, and nightclubs and hotels. Gonzalez shares historical accounts of slavery, piracy, and the sugar industry, beginning with Columbus, who promised gold to the island's inhabitants but instead took the first step in annexing the nation to a Spanish empire that would last 400 years. U.S. politicians (like Nelson Rockefeller and the Dulles brothers) also had financial stakes in the Cuban economy and they pushed policies that supported the "Americanization of Cuba" and restrictive laws which marginalized working-class Black Cubans, Gonzalez writes. And tourism, which formed the largest part of the country's income before the 1950s Cuban Revolution, still dominates the economy today. Gonzalez's approach is scholarly but accessible as it presents the quandaries of modern Cuba. VERDICT For readers looking for a comprehensive survey of Cuban literature. Most academic libraries and large public libraries with an interest in Cuba should consider this work for their collections.—Susan Belsky, Oshkosh P.L., WI

Library Journal