Cuban literature

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The Cuban literature is the Spanish-language literature of Cuba and as such part of the Hispano-American literature . It is one of the most distinguished, most important and influential literatures in Latin America and an important element of Spanish-language literature as a whole, with at times a strong influence in the rest of Latin America and Europe. Right from the start, it also included extensive exile literature, with the preferred countries of exile being France, Mexico and later Spain and the USA, or still being. However, numerous authors also returned to their homeland from exile. In this way, Cuban literature receives a transcultural moment from the start.

Colonial era (until 1898)

Of all the Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America, Cuba was the longest colony (and later American semi-colony) and also maintained slavery longer than other Hispanic American states, namely until 1880/86. This left its mark on literature. This is how the first national revolutionary periodicals emerged very early on, e. B. the magazine El Habanero published in the USA from 1824 to 1826 . But Cuba was never as monoculturally deformed and geared towards exports to the mother country as the British and French colonies in the Caribbean or Hispaniola . The share of slaves in the population never exceeded 50 percent, and in the cities they could buy their way out or were released earlier. This left enough time for a gradual construction of a Creole identity. Also, no Creole language developed in Cuba (or only partially in the Oriente province ), as it was attractive for the black slaves to learn Spanish with a view to ransom.

A large part of the population remained loyal to the king in the revolutionary turmoil of Latin America around 1820, not least because they earned well and the crown was dependent on payments from Cuba - the island was the “milk cow of the empire”. But it was also the fear of a slave revolt like in Santo Domingo that dampened the desire for independence: "Cuba remains Spanish or becomes black," it said.

17th and 18th centuries

The oldest preserved document of Cuban literature is the epic poem Espejo de paciencia ("Mirror of Patience") by Silvestre de Balboa from 1608 about the capture of the bishop in what is now Camagüey province by French pirates and his liberation by Afro-Cuban slaves from Bayamo viewed. The Gran Canaria- born author, about whom very little is known, was aware of the particular problems of colonial society and the ethnic composition of the country. Since the manuscript was not found until 1836 and had references to the situation in Cuba at the time, in which there was fear of a slave revolt, since the discoverer of the manuscript José Antonio Echeverrías was a fierce opponent of slavery, and since the manuscript had a sensitive gap of almost 200 years in the When the construction of a Cuban literary identity was filled, its authenticity was more often questioned; however, it actually shows influences from Canarian authors at the time of its creation. The work was occasionally ascribed to the writer, critic and opponent of slavery Domingo del Monte (1804-1853).

In the work of the first Cuban historian José Martín Félix de Arrate y Acosta (1701–1765) the escalating conflicts between the crown and the Creole bourgeoisie are already reflected. His main work Llave del Nuevo Mundo ("Key to the New World", a description and history of Havana from 1761) was not published until 1830.

In 1776 the first theater in Cuba was founded; the first magazines appeared in 1782. Around 1790, an initially modest literary production began, which was influenced by European neoclassicism and then by romanticism .

National romance

José Maria Heredia (around 1834/35)

The romantic Cuban poetry is one of the most important achievements of the young Latin American literature. But unlike in other Latin American countries - due to the island's loyalty to the king and the victory of the absolutist forces in Spain in 1823 - authors who campaigned for independence and the values ​​of the Enlightenment had to go into exile as early as the first half of the 19th century go. These included the founder of El Habanero , the Catholic priest, theologian, natural scientist and writer Félix Varela (1788-1853), representative of the island to the Spanish Cortes , who fled from Spain to the USA (a candidate for beatification since 2012 ) such as also the poet José María Heredia , influenced by Italian and German models , who can be considered the earliest great romantic on the American continent and is often referred to as the Cuban national poet. He was denounced as a participant in a conspiracy and went into exile in America in 1823 and later in Mexican exile, from where he was able to return to Cuba only two years before his death. His best-known poem is the Oda al Niágara ("Ode to Niagara ") from 1824 in the romantic-neoclassical style. Occasionally he is compared to Walt Whitman .

Placído

The Afro-Cuban romantic lyric poet Gabriel de la Concepción Valdés , known by his pseudonym Placído , was executed on false accusations in the 1844 slave revolt. His poems do not match the quality of Heredia's work, but their language is more natural; he can be seen as a forerunner of Cuban creolism.

In addition to the political and historical essay, other forms of prose developed slowly. Félix Varela, who fought against slavery (earlier also José María Heredia or the Spaniard Félix Mejia, for whose authorship certain orthographic features speak) is attributed to the probably first historical novel in Spanish Jicoténcal . This neoclassical themed (upright heroes sacrificed by treacherous villains) but written in a romantic style about the conquest of Mexico by Hernán Cortés with the help of the Tlaxcalteks was a subject that clearly had contemporary references by postulating a Creole identity and suggested building a virtue-based political system beyond the return to pre-Columbian times and beyond Spanish colonialism.

The autobiography of Juan Francisco Manzano and poet, which he wrote as a slave in 1835, is a testimony to the struggles of this time, in which the forces striving for independence repeatedly shied away from the conflict with the Spanish crown because it was a possible one Feared chaos from slave riots. Anselmo Suárez y Romero (1818–1878) wrote the novel Francisco , published 40 years later in 1838/39 , in which he criticized slavery. Also Félix Tanco belonged to the radical critics of the Spanish colonial administration in Cuba. In 1838 he published the novel Petrona y Rosalía , with which he was the first man of letters to turn against slavery with a fictional work. In 1869 he went to the USA. The publicist and critic Domingo del Monte, a supporter of Manzano, also had to leave Cuba in 1843 because he supposedly wanted to provoke a slave revolt. The romantic poet and writer Juan Clemente Zenea lived temporarily in American exile, but secretly returned to Cuba; he was executed in Havana in 1871. Cirilo Villaverde , author of the important Costumbrist novel `` Cecilia Valdés '' (partly published in 1839, final version in New York in 1882), also had to emigrate to the USA.

During the entire second half of the century, the “annexationists”, especially the sugar plantation owners, who demanded free trade and the connection as a federal state to the USA and in some cases also operated violently, the “separatists”, who demanded independence from Spain, and the monarchists, who remained loyal to the Spanish crown, not only on the political but also on the literary and journalistic terrain, often switching fronts. Until the end of the century, Cuba's dependence on the United States, which purchased 90 percent of the sugar harvest, increased continuously. The island was thereby deformed monoculturally. An anti-American movement arose even before the annexation by the USA, which was also reflected in the heavily politicized literature.

Beginnings of Modernismo

José Martí , the hero of the Wars of Independence 1868–1898, was deported to Spain as a teenager and later lived in exile. In 1882 he published his collection of poems Ismaeilillo , an early testimony to the independent Latin American modernism . In contrast to his Nicaraguan colleague Rubén Darío , he rejected the European role models and demanded a turn to the pre-Columbian cultures in the sense of anti-imperialist Pan - Americanism . One of the most important Cuban exponents of modernism was Julian del Casal ; The brothers Federico Uhrbach and Carlos Pío Uhrbach , who emigrated to the USA and died in the War of Independence in 1897, are also worth mentioning .

But a realistic, unsentimental storytelling tradition was also established at the end of the century by Ramón Meza y Suárez Inclán ( Mi tío el empleado , 1887).

From the founding of the republic in 1902 to the revolution in 1959

Soon after the founding of the republic, in which a tyranny was replaced by a pseudo-democratic regime dependent on the USA, Cuban literature fell into an identity crisis. The lyrical work of Julián del Casals continued to exert a great influence, particularly on Federico Uhrbach ( Resurrección , 1916); but the majority of writers turned away from modernism and neo-romanticism and turned to social criticism in frustration . The romantic costumbrismo , which continued to have an impact in Central America and Cuba until after 1900, was given way by sociologismo , a socially realistic trend that regarded all phenomena of life as socially determined and thus was close to early naturalism . According to the novelist, essayist and literary scholar Alberto Garrandés , the authors of this phase were sensitive seismographs of society, but blind to the unconscious. Representatives include Jesús Castellanos , who returned from exile in Mexico in 1898, only to leave Cuba again in 1904, and the narrator, novelist, playwright and diplomat Alfonso Hernández Catá with his playful and elegant prose, which reflects the neuroses of the citizens and formally still reminiscent of modernism, but is also influenced by the novela gótica and the American short story . This also includes Enrique Serpa , publicist, poet and leading member of the artist group Grupo minorista . These authors prepared the ground for modern Cuban narrative literature.

prose

According to Alberto Garrandés, the narrative literature of the 1930s to 1960s, in which avant- gardism left hardly any traces, is characterized by four variants of realism:

  • Realismo rural imaginativo : The main representatives were Castellanos and Rodríguez (Roman Ciénaga , Madrid 1937). The simple life in the country and that of the peasant received the rank of archetypal, whereby the world of the African American was largely left out.
  • Realismo urbano , which described the world of the blue-collar worker and small salaried employees, which did not always succeed. The narrators often remained on the surface of things, did not get to the bottom of them. Her realism moved in the domestic-urban milieu and was based on an aesthetic of simplicity and everyday life. Representatives in Cuba were Guillermo Cabrera Infante , Calvert Casey, who only immigrated to Cuba from the USA in 1959, and also Humberto Arenal and Antonio Benítez.
  • Realismo metafísico , which turns to the inside of the subject, its abysses and its essential otherness . Representatives of this existentialist current in Cuba were Labrador Ruíz, Rodríguez Tomeu and Virgilio Piñera , who was influenced by Jorge Luis Borges in Argentine exile and also worked as a playwright.
  • Realismo mitopoético , also nativismo with the mythical elevation of the “wonderfully real” everyday life of the autochthonous population or historical events in which a heroic subject fights against hostile powers in nature or society. Alejo Carpentier ( El reino de este mundo , 1949), who was influenced by Parisian surrealism and repeatedly describes the life of Afro-Cubans, is considered to be its best-known representative in Europe . This variety of realism, which has also been criticized as pseudo-Afro-American, is comparable to Peruvian indigenism . Lezama Lima , gifted with baroque linguistic fantasy , whose novel Paradiso polarized the critics, but is counted among the best 100 novels of the 20th century in Spanish by El Mundo, as well as Lino Novás Calvo and Ezequiel Vieta, who was influenced by Hemingway, can also be assigned to this trend become.

The 1940s and early 1950s became the “golden decades” of the Cuban short story, which found many readers in the middle classes in a phase of temporary boom, social and educational reforms. In the 1940s, traces of Indian cultures were rediscovered in Cuba. Fernando Ortiz Fernández dealt with their various forms of expression and brought the concept of transculturality into the discussion, which, however, was still little reflected in the narrative literature. Other authors from the Antilles, especially from Martinique, led the way here .

Poetry

Nicolás Guillén (1942)

Between 1923 and 1933 Latin American avant- gardism developed at the same time and influenced poetry (and music) through the liberation from grammatical rules, free verse formation and rich metaphor. The stylistic device of Negrismo - comparable to the Haitian - is the Afro-American rhythm. Nicolás Guillén , best known as a poet, opened up the Afro-American culture of Cuba for literature. His works (Motivos de Son, 1930, Sóngoro Cosongo 1931) are inspired by Cuban music, the Son ; the “mestizaje”, ie the mixing of the European and African races, is one of his main themes. Since 1953 he stayed mainly abroad; In 1958 he emigrated to Paris because he had to expect his arrest. After the revolution in 1959 he returned to Cuba and became president of the Writers' Union.

Dulce María Loynaz de Alvarez de Cañas

Clearly in the shadow of Guillén stood the negrist poets Ramón Guirao and Marcelino Arozarena Ramos (1912–1996). Lezama Lima, famous as a prose writer, also emerged as an influential poet, founder and editor of literary magazines ( Orígenes ) and cultural functionary. Another influential group around Orígenes was the poet, short story writer and translator of Russian writers Eliseo Diego (1920–1994). Emilio Ballagas (1908–1954), who appeared in his early work as a representative of poesía pura and was also known as a literary scholar , held on to the neo-romantic tradition for a long time . The poetry of the rather apolitical Cervantes Prize winner Dulce María Loynaz, who is characterized by magic realism , is to be understood as a parallel development to realismo mitopético .

During the Spanish Civil War, the Spanish poet and Nobel Prize winner Juan Ramón Jiménez stayed in Cuba for a while in 1937/38, where he organized conferences and enjoyed great success. His visit had a profound influence on young Cuban poets.

1959 to 1993

Although some authors such as the narrator Lino Novás Calvo and the lyric poet Gastón Baquero left Cuba soon after the revolution, Havana briefly became a literary center of Latin America with a strong influence on Latin America and Europe. Other authors returned to Cuba, such as B. Umberto Arenal from exile in the United States. In 1959, the Casa de las Américas cultural center with an affiliated publisher was founded to promote collaboration with other Latin American artists and institutions. In 1960 the Premio de las Casas Américas emerged from a literary competition and has been awarded annually to a Latin American writer since then (including Heberto Padilla in 1962 for El justo tiempo humano ).

In the mid-1960s, government pressure began to politicize literature. A type of narrative arose that dealt with issues of the revolution. The Bay of Pigs invasion , the fight against "bandits", the literacy campaign and everyday life in Cuba were priority themes in the literature of the revolutionary era. Cuban literature was supposed to serve an immediate social mission at this stage. Representatives of this era are Jesús Díaz , Norberto Fuentes , who later wrote reports on the Cuban military operations in Africa and emigrated to the USA in 1994, Enrique Cirules (1938-2016), Eduardo Heras León (* 1940), Julio Travieso (* 1940) , Arturo Chinea, Manuel Cofiño and the literary scholar Sergio Chaple (* 1939), who described Havana in the 1950s as a stronghold of the mafia and the US secret services. It was at this time that Miguel Barnet's Biografía de un Cimarrón (1966) was published.

After the National Congress of Education and Culture in 1971 the situation changed radically. The increasing state regulation of art meant that only a few authors moved outside the expected norm. These include the science fiction author Ángel Arango (1926–2013), Miguel Collazo (1936–1999), the author of fantastic, later realistic stories, and Onelio Jorge Cardoso, influenced by Ernest Hemingway , with his transcendentally exaggerated descriptions of everyday situations. But overall, mediocrity dominated over the next 10 years. Many writers left the country in the "gray five years", so u. a. In 1980 the eminent poet Heberto Padilla , a sharp critic of the regime who, despite the advocacy of many celebrities, was persecuted, imprisoned and only rehabilitated in 2013. Carpentier, however, retained the magical indigenous perspective on the Cuban dictatorships of the period before 1959 in his later works ( El recurso des método 1974, German: Staatsraison ).

Towards the end of the 1970s, a narrative style developed that expressed itself in a new technique and a new power of representation. To mention are Gustavo Eguren, Guillermo Prieto, Miguel Collazo, Eduardo Heras. In the 1980s, the emotions of the literary characters came to the fore. Representatives of this period are Miguel Mejides (1950–2018), Félix Luis Viera (* 1945), Francisco López Sacha (* 1950), Luis Manuel García Méndez (* 1954) and Reinaldo Montero (* 1952). In 1982 the Premio Nacional de Literatura de Cuba (Cuban State Prize for Literature) was launched by the Cuban Ministry of Culture. Receiving a culture award favors the writers in allocating paper, which is important since fees for publications in Cuba are hardly or not at all paid. The first state prize winner was Nicolás Guillén.

The cultural and political liberalization of the 1980s was accompanied by the establishment of writing workshops in which a new generation of authors were trained: the Novísimos , to whom u. a. the versatile narrator, novelist, essayist and editor of numerous anthologies belonged to Alberto Garrandés (* 1960). However, the new era did not survive the crisis of the early 1990s. The work and the decisive role of the poet and Marxist literary theorist Roberto Fernández Retamar , who had held the management function of the Casa de las Américas since 1986 and tried to position Cuba's literature as Third World literature against European aestheticism, were highly controversial.

The time after the economic crisis in 1993: the "Novísimos"

The era of literary workshops ended around 1990, since the authors had apparently only learned the rules of traditional narratives in order to violate them - in very different ways and with different stylistic expressions. This distinguishes them from the narrators of the 1980s, who mastered and respected the traditional rules, but not always with artistically successful results.

It is all the more remarkable that the younger authors - born around 1958 to 1966 - returned to the models of the avant-garde despite the threat of social paralysis and the aggravated economic situation after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which peaked in 1993. They orientated themselves towards European writers, immersed themselves in trivial culture, the world of women, minimalism, western philosophy, the world of sex, poverty and night. The authors of the 1990s made a claim to leadership through extremely provocative, disparate texts, which thematically and formally form a broad spectrum, and thereby tried to preserve their creative individuality. Some of their work was disseminated on the Internet, which thus fulfilled functions that the press was not allowed to take on - also because of a lack of paper.

The painter and sculptor Pedro Juan Gutiérrez became known as a novelist through his Trilogía sucia de La Habana (1999), which thematized the pulsating life and sex in the center of Habana. Another representative of "dirty realism" is Fernando Velázquez Medina (* 1951) with his experimental novel Última rumba en La Habana (2001), which was published in New York. This generation also includes Ángel Santiesteban Prats (* 1966), who was later sentenced to imprisonment, Ena Lucía Portela (* 1972), the science fiction author José Miguel Sánchez ( * 1972), who has received numerous awards in Cuba and abroad for her stories and novels. * 1967, known as Yoss ), the writer and screenwriter Eduardo del Llano (* 1962), the fantasy writer Ernesto Santana (* 1958), who received the Czech Franz Kafka Prize in 2010 ; also Raúl Aguiar (* 1962), who approached cyberpunk in his starkly realistic style , the internationally known dramaturge Atilio Caballero (* 1959) and the short story writer Armando Abreu Morales ( Cara y Cruz 1997). The work of Alexis Díaz Pimienta (* 1966) has been translated into several languages; they are in the tradition of absurd literature, but like his famous short story La guagua (2002), they clearly refer to Cuban reality. The award-winning author has focused on novel writing for the past few years.

Ena Lucía Portela

One of the more established authors who have been active since the 1980s is Arturo Arango (* 1955), director of the Casas de las Américas , who tackled current political problems in El libro de la realidad (2001) and also works as a screenwriter.

As a result of the political and economic crisis and the general shortage around 1993/94, there was a new wave of emigration; many authors also forcibly fell silent. Ángel Santiesteban, initially highly decorated, had been prohibited from publishing since the 1990s and was arrested in 2013. Fernando Velázquez Medina also had to emigrate to the USA. Other authors only published abroad at times, such as Leonardo Padura ( Pasado Perfecto , Mexico City 1991) and Wendy Guerra .

In recent years, various neglected or exiled authors have received new honors in Cuba. Leonardo Padura, for example, who became known for popular historical and detective novels that were definitely critical of the regime, received the State Prize in 2012. The dissident Pedro Juan Gutiérrez continues to publish in his home country and Fernando Velázquez Medina's novel El mar de los caníbales was allowed to appear again in Cuba.

A non-commercial international book fair has been held in Havana every year since 1992. It is the second largest in Latin America after that in Guadalajara, Mexico . Germany was to become the host country of the fair in 2004, which was prevented by intervention by the federal government. In 2013 more than 1000 new books were published in Cuba. Since around 2000, there has also been increased translation activity into German.

Newer exile literature

Among the numerous representatives of exile literature are v. a. To mention: the symbolic figure of the resistance against Fidel Castro , the novelist (German: Three sad tigers 1987) and screenwriter Guillermo Cabrera Infante , who emigrated to Madrid and then to London in 1965, and also the aforementioned Heberto Padilla, who lived in the USA as the editor of exile literature, Reinaldo Arenas Fuentes , who - discriminated against and persecuted as a nonconformist and homosexual - also emigrated to the USA in 1980, Rolando Sánchez Mejías , who went to Spain in 1997, Jesús Díaz, who lived in Berlin and Madrid (several of his books were translated into German) and Miguel Sales and Zoé Valdés ( Café Cuba 1959), who emigrated to Paris.

In her analysis of Cuban exile literature in Paris, Andrea Gremels comes to the conclusion that the experience of double non-belonging and the linguistic isolation trigger a surge of creativity on the one hand, but at the same time allow the authors to dream of Cuba as a lost paradise. It is difficult to judge whether it is national literature in the diaspora, transcultural exile literature or transcultural (world) literature. Thus in Paris the milieu of a “Cuban Francophonie” has developed around Eduardo Manet and others.

The poet Eliseo Diego (1920–1994) and his son Eliseo Alberto (1951–2011), winners of the Premio Alfaguara for novels in Spanish, went to Mexico . José Manuel Prieto , who studied in Novosibirsk and translated several books from Russian into Spanish, became famous for the second volume of his Russia trilogy ( Liwadija 1999, German 2004), which has been translated into several languages . He lived in Mexico since 1994 and in New York since 2004. Àngel Arango (1926-2013), whose science fiction novels were undesirable in the 1980s, did not move to Miami until 2009 , where he lived until his death. Also Carlos Pintado already emigrated with 23 years in 1997 to the United States, but wrote his poems and stories continue in Spanish.

Antonio Orlando Rodríguez (* 1956), originally an author for children and young people, later writer of screenplays for television and literary critic, went to Costa Rica in 1991 , then to Colombia and in 1999 to the USA. In 2008 he received the Premio Alfaguara for his novel Chiquita . The novel and crime writer Ronaldo Menéndez emigrated to Spain. His short novel Las bestias (2006) is an example of “dirty realism”, a surrealistic description of violence, horror, bestiality and paranoia. Jorge Luís Arzola (* 1966) has lived in Berlin since 2002.

literature

  • Martin Franzbach, Social History of Cuban Literature (1608–1958) . Valentia, Frankfurt am Main 2012.
  • Martin Franzbach, Historia social de la literatura cubana (1959–2005) . Vol. I. Valentia, Frankfurt am Main 2014.
  • Martin Franzbach, Historia social de la literatura cubana (1959–2005) . Vol. II. Valentia, Frankfurt am Main 2015.
  • José Antonio Portuondo, Overview of Cuban Literature. Reclam-Verlag, Leipzig 1974.
  • Michael Rössner: Hispanoamerican literature , in: Walter Jens (Hrsg.): Kindlers new literature lexicon. Edition in 21 volumes. 1988-1992, Vol. 20, pp. 40-56. Komet, Frechen 2001, ISBN 3-89836-214-0 .
Anthologies
  • Edmundo Aray (Ed.): Cuban Poetry of the Present. Peter Hammer Verlag Wuppertal 1971.
  • Alberto Garrandés (Ed.): Aire de Luz. La Habana, 2nd ex. and exp. 2004 edition, ISBN 959-10-0912-7 ( Spanish ).
  • Michi Strausfeld (Ed.): Cubanísimo! Young storytellers from Cuba. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 3-518-41187-X .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Zeuske: Slavery, post-emancipation and gender in Cuba. An overview. In: in: Postemancipation and Gender , Ed .: Ulrike Schmieder. Leipzig 2007 (= Comparativ. Journal for Global History and Comparative Society Research , 17, No. 1, pp. 18-37.)
  2. ^ John M. Lipski: A history of Afro-Hispanic language: five centuries and five continents. Cambridge University Press, 2005.
  3. ↑ Zeuske 2007, p. 20.
  4. ↑ Espejo de paciencia , on ecured.cu (Spanish)
  5. ↑ Spanish text on www.camagueycuba.org . Accessed September 18, 2017.
  6. ↑ Annegret Thiem: Rauminszenierungen: literary space in the Caribbean prose literature of the 19th century. Münster 2010, pp. 216–221.
  7. ↑ Michael Rössner: The Hispanoamerican literature. In: Walter Jens (Ed.): Kindlers new literature lexicon , vol. 20, Munich 1996, p. 44
  8. ↑ Philadelphia 1826, reprinted 1995.
  9. ^ Francisco Bustamante: Jicoténcal (Filadelfia, 1826), temprana novela histórica latinoamericana entre la postindependencia y el neocolonialismo. In: revista landa 5 (2017) 2, pp. 407-425.
  10. ↑ Luis Williams: Literary Bondage. Slavery in Cuban narrative. University of Texas Press 1990.
  11. ↑ Fedrico Uhrbach Campuzano in www.ecured.cu
  12. ^ Sandra Casanova Vizcaíno: La china gótica de Alfonso Hernández Catá. In: Perífrasis , ISSN-e 2145-9045, Vol. 4, No. 8, 2013, pp. 56-70.
  13. ↑ http://www.ecured.cu/index.php/Grupo_Minorista
  14. ↑ Alberto Garrandés calls this phase that of the "-isms" ("ismos"; preface to the anthology Aire de Luz , 2nd edition 2004, p. 7f.)
  15. ↑ Rössner 1996, pp. 49 and 53.
  16. ↑ The 100 best novels in Spanish , www.elmundo.es, January 13, 2001.
  17. ↑ Biographical data in www.afrocubaweb.com are included.
  18. ↑ Rössner 1996, p. 47.
  19. ^ Markus Ebenhoch: Poor Cuba: Depictions of Poverty in Cuban Short Stories of the 1990s. Münster 2013, p. 175.
  20. ↑ Reporters without borders , February 28, 2014
  21. ↑ German edition: A perfect life . Unions-Verlag Zurich 2005.
  22. ↑ For example, heretics. Unions-Verlag Zurich 2014.
  23. ↑ Deutschlandfunk, May 4, 2015
  24. ↑ Amerika21 on the 2013 Book Fair
  25. ↑ Andrea Gremels: Contemporary Cuban literature in Paris between exile and transculturality , Tübingen 2014, Book on Demand, ISBN 978-3-8233-6846-5 , pp. 285 f.