Looking Within/Mirar Adentro: Selected Poems/Poemas Escogidos, 1954-2000

African American Life

by Nancy Morejón

A bilingual edition of poetry from an important Cuban poet. The African Cuban poet Nancy Morejon set out at a young age to explore the beauty and complexities of the life around and within her. Themes of social and political concern, loyalty, friendship and family, African identity, women's experiences, and hope for Cuba's future all found their way into her poems through bold metaphor and tender lyricism. This panoramic anthology, selected from ten volumes of Morejon's work and organized by theme, contains some poems that have already been acclaimed in several languages, others that are less known, and some never before published. Overall they present to Morejon's readership an enhanced, broader, and updated spectrum of her poetry in a Spanish-English edition.

Although Morejon does not sympathize as much with intellectualized feminism as with "street" feminism (the kind that erupts with force as it confronts daily life), her poems illuminate issues in women's existence. Without intending to, she has revitalized contemporary Caribbean feminist literary discourse. One can find in her work the tensions between colonizer and colonized, dominator and dominated, and at the same time enjoy the sheer beauty of images depicting suffering, strength, and hope.

Poet, essayist, critic, editor, journalist, and translator, Nancy Morejon was born in the Los Sitios district of Central Havana in 1944. Her first book, Mutismos, was published in 1962, and she has collaborated throughout her career with leading musicians, playwrights, and actors. She has recently extended her artistic talents into the plastic arts. Morejon now directs the Caribbean Studies Center at Casa de las Americas, Havana, epicenter of Cuban and Latin American intelligentsia.

Genres: Poetry

367 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2002

About the author

Nancy Morejón (Havana, 1944- ) is a Cuban poet, critic, essayist.

She graduated with honors at the University of Havana, having studied Caribbean and French Literature, and she is fluent in French and English. She later taught French. She is a well-regarded translator of French and English into Spanish, particularly Caribbean writers, including Edouard Glissant, Jacques Roumain and Aimé Césaire, René Depestre. Her own poetry has been translated into English, German, French, Portuguese, Gallego, Russian, Macedonian, and others. She is as of 2013 director of Revista Union, journal of the UNEAC, Union of Writers and Artists; in 2008 she was elected president of the writer's section of Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba (UNEAC).

She has produced a number of journalistic, critical, and dramatic works. One of the most notable is her book-length treatments of poet Nicolás Guillén. In 1986 she won the Cuban "Premio de la crítica" (Critic's Prize) for Piedra Pulida, and in 2001 won Cuba's National Prize for Literature, awarded for the first time to a black woman. This national prize for literature was created in 1983; Nicolás Guillén was the first to receive it. She also won the Golden Wreath of the Struga poetry evenings for 2006. She has toured extensively in the United States and in other countries; her work has been translated into over ten languages, including English, Swedish and German.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Maya]

“What could he tell me?
Why am I living in a lodging perfect for a bat?
Why must I serve him?
Where could he go in his splendid carriage,
Drawn by horses happier than I?” Page 199

[Mills College Library]

861.64 M838 2003