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The Cuban revolution of 1959 initiated a significant
exodus, with more than 700,000 Cubans eventually settling in
the United States. This community creates a major part of
what is now known as the Cuban diaspora. In
Cuban-American Literature of Exile, Isabel Alvarez
Borland forces the dialogue between literature and history
into the open by focusing on narratives that tell the story
of the 1959 exodus and its aftermath.
Alvarez Borland pulls together a diverse array of
Cuban-American voices writing in both English and
Spanish--often from contrasting perspectives and
approaches--over several generations and waves of
immigration. Writers discussed include Guillermo Cabrera
Infante, Reinaldo Arenas, Roberto Fernandez, Achy Obejas,
and Cristina Garcia. The author's analysis of their works
uncovers a movement from narratives that reflect the
personal loss caused by the historical fact of exile, to
autobiographical writings that reflect the need to search
for a new identity in a new language, to fictions that
dramatize the authors' constructed Cuban-American personae.
If read collectively, she argues, these sometimes dissimilar
texts appear to be in dialogue with one another as they all
document a people's quest to reinvent themselves outside
their nation of origin.
Cuban-American Literature of Exile encourages
readers to consider the evolution of Cuban literature in the
United States over the last forty years. Alvarez Borland
defines a new American literature of Cuban heritage and
documents the changing identity of an exiled literature.
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"Displaying a sensitivity to nuances of textual meaning
as wall as to broader trends and contexts, Alvarez Borland
offers a thorough and authoritative examination of the
emerging canon of Cuban diaspora literature. Although I know
this body of work fairly well, I came away with a deeper and
renewed understanding of the texts and authors she
discusses."
--Gustavo Perez Firmat, author of Life on
the Hyphen and Next Year in Cuba
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