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Cubana: Contemporary Fiction by Cuban Women
Until recently, the combination of a Cuban old boys' network and an ideological emphasis on "tough" writing kept fiction by Cuban women largely unknown and unread. Cubana , the U.S. version of a groundbreaking anthology of women's fiction published in Cuba in 1996, introduces these once-ignored writers to a new audience. Havana editor and author Mirta Yáñez has assembled an impressive group of sixteen stories that reveals the strength and variety of contemporary writing by Cuban women-and offers a glimpse inside Cuba during a time of both extreme economic difficulty and artistic renaissance.
Many of these stories focus pointedly on economic and social conditions. Josefina de Diego's "Internal Monologue on a Corner in Havana" shows us the current crisis through the eyes and voice of a witty economist-turned-vendor who must sell her extra cigarettes. Others-Magaly Sánchez's erotic fantasy "Catalina in the Afternoons" and Mylene Fernández Pintado's psychologically deft "Anhedonia (A Story in Two Women)"-reveal a nascent Cuban feminism. The twelve-year-old narrator of Aida Bahr's "The Scent of Limes" tries to make sense of her grandparents' conservative values, her stepfather's disappearance, and her mother's fierce independence. The Cuban-American writer Achy Obejas recreates the strange dual identity of the immigrant, while avant-garde stories like the playful and savvy "The Urn and the Name (A Merry Tale)," written by Ena Lucía Portela, reveal the vitality of the experimental tradition in Cuba. And Rosa Ileana Boudet's "Potosí 11: Address Unknown" is both a romantic paean to a time of youth, passion, and revolution, and an attempt to reconcile that past with a diminished present.
Many of these stories focus pointedly on economic and social conditions. Josefina de Diego's "Internal Monologue on a Corner in Havana" shows us the current crisis through the eyes and voice of a witty economist-turned-vendor who must sell her extra cigarettes. Others-Magaly Sánchez's erotic fantasy "Catalina in the Afternoons" and Mylene Fernández Pintado's psychologically deft "Anhedonia (A Story in Two Women)"-reveal a nascent Cuban feminism. The twelve-year-old narrator of Aida Bahr's "The Scent of Limes" tries to make sense of her grandparents' conservative values, her stepfather's disappearance, and her mother's fierce independence. The Cuban-American writer Achy Obejas recreates the strange dual identity of the immigrant, while avant-garde stories like the playful and savvy "The Urn and the Name (A Merry Tale)," written by Ena Lucía Portela, reveal the vitality of the experimental tradition in Cuba. And Rosa Ileana Boudet's "Potosí 11: Address Unknown" is both a romantic paean to a time of youth, passion, and revolution, and an attempt to reconcile that past with a diminished present.
- GenresShort Stories
240 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1998
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 11, 2022
I've had a goal for a while learn more about Cuba beyond what I was able to find out from my grandmother (who found talking about it painful) or my dad (who was 14 when they left), but a lot of what's out there is written by other exiles. So I was really excited to find this book, since most of the authors were actually living in post-revolutionary Cuba when they wrote these stories - AND all the authors are women!
This is a really interesting and varied collection, and I wish we'd gotten more. And we could have, damn it, since it is actually a sub-set of a book called "Pillars of Salt"! (Are my Spanish reading skills up to par to tackle that if I ever find it? IDK -the language in some of these stories is very convoluted and...literary.).
The foreword by Ruth Behar is fantastic and really got me hyped...but I'd recommend saving the Introduction for after you've read the stories unless you REALLY like sentences like: "The fundamental obligation to leave marginality behind, and the urgency of breaking with dogmas foreign to literature, caused women writers to be the first to go beyond the Manichean vision and devote themselves to developing a more complex form of representation" I mean, I'm an academic myself, but JEEZ.
'Somebody has to cry': A brilliant place to start. Two pages in I'm wondering "is it wrong to be simping so hard for this girl we already know is doomed?" Then it keeps giving gems like this: "it occurs to me that she cultivated her body for it's use-value. All the rest of us...were preparing ourselves for a future auction." This woman's life goal was to build low-cost housing that actually looked nice (and of course she gets pushback from the fans of the Soviet brutalist style). And of course she's queer... So yes, Lazarita, please do cry for Maritza!
'Japanese Daisies' and 'Internal Monologue on a Corner in Havana' are slice-of-life stories on the way Cuba's weird economic situation affects how people think and interact. For example, creating dilemmas like: Should I smoke one of the cigarettes I'm trying to (illegally) sell, or should I trade two of them for a cone of plantain chips?
'A Tooth for a Tooth' starts that way too, but becomes a sharp little satire on what it means to "have eggs" (the Cuban phrase for "to have balls")
'Anhedonia' - Love the shift in POVs illustrating the misunderstanding between two women who could have been real friends if they only admitted their vulnerabilities
'The Scent of Limes' - The shifting of time back and forth in the 12-YO's narration mirrors the sea at the foot of this house. And Iris...I know what you did to Anibal for your daughter's sake. Good for you!
'My Aunt' - Very short story about how our relatives are a part of us, for better or worse.
'Disremembering a Smell' - TBH not sure I understood this one, which is quite surreal. Enjoyable to read, though.
'Catalina in the Afternoons' - Sensually evocative tale of a colonial-era woman who broke her leg after canoodling with the gardener and to pass time imagines a dove is an enchanted knight who visits her. Couldn't help thinking of it as a bit like Lady Chatterley's Lover if it were actually written from a female perspective (for example, while this is very much about a straight woman's sexual awakening, dicks are NOT the focus).
'Potosi II: Address unknown' - DNF. Too meandering and confusing.
'A Whiff of Wild Desire' - Ummm. Maybe this one wasn't MEANT to be fat-phobic, given the ending. But it really, REALLY is!
'Dust to Dust' - These three ladies have been friends for decades. But when one is dying, the other two have a really strange way of expressing that!
'I Just Can't Take It' - You think the end of The Notebook was sad? Well, at least that pair could afford a nice nursing home. This old man no doubt made many sacrifices to get to the US - "land of opportunity!" - and yet he's in the same scraping-by position as the Cuban characters in stories 2 & 3. Worse, possibly, since the medical system was one thing Castro's government got RIGHT!
'The Egyptians' - Quite a funny take on paranoia battling with friendship. There's a bunch of Cuban doctors and Egyptian ones working together (In Egypt, I think; Cuba DOES export medical expertise around the developing world). And the Cubans are trying to be on their toes because their bosses are convinced that spying may be afoot, but the Egyptians are just so damn likeable, leading to goofy interactions like this: "Meanwhile, the Egyptians waited with Pharaonic patience, not comprehending why it took two or three cups of tea to find out whether it was easy to grow black beans or whether Cuban winters were very long"
'We Came All the Way From Cuba So You Could Dress Like This?' - Jeez, thank GOD my family isn't like the stereotypical arch-conservative Cuban exiles depicted here! I liked the shifting back and forth in the memories between the family's arrival in the US and later memories, and the shifts in tone that keep you on your toes. That includes some unexpectedly spicy Sapphic stuff...though I wish the bit about how the mother outlives the narrator had been left out because A) How? What happened?!? Don't just kill your queer character somewhere in the off-page-future and not explain! and B) How is she narrating this if she's dead? (Edit: Actually, I just remembered there probably IS an explanation - the chemo reference early on. I just forgot about it, assuming she survived, because...point B. But still: death of the narrator seems unnecessary.)
'The Urn and the Name' - This is another one that is a little hard to follow (it keeps switching perspective), but it seems to be a slice-of-life of three young people who are Bohemian in the grubbiest way possible.
This is a really interesting and varied collection, and I wish we'd gotten more. And we could have, damn it, since it is actually a sub-set of a book called "Pillars of Salt"! (Are my Spanish reading skills up to par to tackle that if I ever find it? IDK -the language in some of these stories is very convoluted and...literary.).
The foreword by Ruth Behar is fantastic and really got me hyped...but I'd recommend saving the Introduction for after you've read the stories unless you REALLY like sentences like: "The fundamental obligation to leave marginality behind, and the urgency of breaking with dogmas foreign to literature, caused women writers to be the first to go beyond the Manichean vision and devote themselves to developing a more complex form of representation" I mean, I'm an academic myself, but JEEZ.
'Somebody has to cry': A brilliant place to start. Two pages in I'm wondering "is it wrong to be simping so hard for this girl we already know is doomed?" Then it keeps giving gems like this: "it occurs to me that she cultivated her body for it's use-value. All the rest of us...were preparing ourselves for a future auction." This woman's life goal was to build low-cost housing that actually looked nice (and of course she gets pushback from the fans of the Soviet brutalist style). And of course she's queer... So yes, Lazarita, please do cry for Maritza!
'Japanese Daisies' and 'Internal Monologue on a Corner in Havana' are slice-of-life stories on the way Cuba's weird economic situation affects how people think and interact. For example, creating dilemmas like: Should I smoke one of the cigarettes I'm trying to (illegally) sell, or should I trade two of them for a cone of plantain chips?
'A Tooth for a Tooth' starts that way too, but becomes a sharp little satire on what it means to "have eggs" (the Cuban phrase for "to have balls")
'Anhedonia' - Love the shift in POVs illustrating the misunderstanding between two women who could have been real friends if they only admitted their vulnerabilities
'The Scent of Limes' - The shifting of time back and forth in the 12-YO's narration mirrors the sea at the foot of this house. And Iris...I know what you did to Anibal for your daughter's sake. Good for you!
'My Aunt' - Very short story about how our relatives are a part of us, for better or worse.
'Disremembering a Smell' - TBH not sure I understood this one, which is quite surreal. Enjoyable to read, though.
'Catalina in the Afternoons' - Sensually evocative tale of a colonial-era woman who broke her leg after canoodling with the gardener and to pass time imagines a dove is an enchanted knight who visits her. Couldn't help thinking of it as a bit like Lady Chatterley's Lover if it were actually written from a female perspective (for example, while this is very much about a straight woman's sexual awakening, dicks are NOT the focus).
'Potosi II: Address unknown' - DNF. Too meandering and confusing.
'A Whiff of Wild Desire' - Ummm. Maybe this one wasn't MEANT to be fat-phobic, given the ending. But it really, REALLY is!
'Dust to Dust' - These three ladies have been friends for decades. But when one is dying, the other two have a really strange way of expressing that!
'I Just Can't Take It' - You think the end of The Notebook was sad? Well, at least that pair could afford a nice nursing home. This old man no doubt made many sacrifices to get to the US - "land of opportunity!" - and yet he's in the same scraping-by position as the Cuban characters in stories 2 & 3. Worse, possibly, since the medical system was one thing Castro's government got RIGHT!
'The Egyptians' - Quite a funny take on paranoia battling with friendship. There's a bunch of Cuban doctors and Egyptian ones working together (In Egypt, I think; Cuba DOES export medical expertise around the developing world). And the Cubans are trying to be on their toes because their bosses are convinced that spying may be afoot, but the Egyptians are just so damn likeable, leading to goofy interactions like this: "Meanwhile, the Egyptians waited with Pharaonic patience, not comprehending why it took two or three cups of tea to find out whether it was easy to grow black beans or whether Cuban winters were very long"
'We Came All the Way From Cuba So You Could Dress Like This?' - Jeez, thank GOD my family isn't like the stereotypical arch-conservative Cuban exiles depicted here! I liked the shifting back and forth in the memories between the family's arrival in the US and later memories, and the shifts in tone that keep you on your toes. That includes some unexpectedly spicy Sapphic stuff...though I wish the bit about how the mother outlives the narrator had been left out because A) How? What happened?!? Don't just kill your queer character somewhere in the off-page-future and not explain! and B) How is she narrating this if she's dead? (Edit: Actually, I just remembered there probably IS an explanation - the chemo reference early on. I just forgot about it, assuming she survived, because...point B. But still: death of the narrator seems unnecessary.)
'The Urn and the Name' - This is another one that is a little hard to follow (it keeps switching perspective), but it seems to be a slice-of-life of three young people who are Bohemian in the grubbiest way possible.
December 4, 2019
I was excited to find this collection of short stories written by Cubana feminists when I was preparing for my trip to Cuba. It is a well curated collection that offers varied perspectives on Cuban women on the island and some that immigrated. I have learned quite a bit about Cuban history but some of these essays have references that I didn’t understand. Some are written better than others but each offers an interesting glance at the difficulties women face whether they stayed or not.
October 18, 2020
Amazing stories did have a hard time following some of the stories had to read some twice due to the language. But awesome.
February 8, 2023
Some stories were good, others didn't read smoothly (translation problems?) or just didn't make any sense to me. I did learn some about Cuban history and immigration of Cuban citizens to Miami.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews