Wendy Guerra

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Wendy Guerra, 2018

Wendy Guerra Torres (born December 11, 1970 in Havana ) is a Cuban writer and actress . The main focus of her work is poetry and literature . Her debut novel All go away (Original: Todos se van ) was also published in German.

Live and act

Wendy Guerra spent her childhood in Cienfuegos and Havana. She inherited her love for poetry from her mother, Albis Torres, who worked at the famous Teatro Guiñol puppet theater . According to Guerra, her mother was a much better poet than herself, but she was not fortunate enough to get published. At the age of 17, Wendy Guerra published her first volume of poetry , with which she received good reviews. She then attended the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) art school in Havana.

Nevertheless, she began her professional career first with Cuban television, where she worked as a presenter for children's programs and later as an actress in the theater as well as in film and television . Among other things, she played in Hello Hemingway. She then decided to study directing .

She completed her studies at the San Antonio de los Baños Film School near Havana. By Gabriel Garcia Marquez , who until his death led this university, she got the Council to try literature. To date she had already published two volumes of poetry . However, she initially completed her directing studies.

In diaries she described the lesser-known facets of Cuban life, especially of the education system: boarding schools in the countryside, harvest operations, military drill on the weapon, regular power outages and teachers who burn books. Her first work Todos se van builds on this, in which she describes the lack of prospects for the Cuban population as a reason for massive emigration. She received international awards for this book, including the Bruguera Literature Prize and the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres . In Cuba it was suddenly no longer noticed in the official cultural scene.

She then wrote for Cuban cultural magazines and columns for the Spanish newspaper El Mundo . In 2011 she published the book Posar desnuda en la Habana ("Posing Naked in Havana"), an " apocryphal " diary from the perspective of Anaïs Nin , whose parents were born in Havana and by whom she feels inspired. She later switched from the diary format to the novel . Here, too, she regularly sprinkles poems, which she continues to see as inspiration. Her novels are mainly set in the capital Havana. She writes about minorities, stigmatized people , for example blacks and bisexuals . One novel is called Negra ("The Black One "). It was published in 2013 and describes her youth in the Cayo Hueso district of Centro Habana with her single mother. He tells about the racism in Cuban society, which is still present despite all official assurances.

In 2016 her novel Domingo de Revolución (Sunday of the Revolution) was published. She began writing it in 2014, the year of the death of her mentor, the “intellectual left” García Márquez and the beginning of the thaw in Cuba's relations with the United States under Barack Obama . It represents a kind of auto-fiction , as she imagines her Cuba in the future. Guerra writes about censorship and self-censorship . The main character Cleo is insulted by the Cuban government as an "agent of the CIA " because of what she writes and described by exile as a "weapon against the writers who live outside the island".

Wendy Guerra is married to the pianist Ernán López-Nussa .

Literary works

Poems

  • Platea a oscuras , 1987.
  • Cabeza rapada , 1996.
  • Ropa interior , 2008.

Novels

  • Todos se van . Bruguera, Barcelona 2006.
    • Everyone is leaving. Translated from the Spanish by Peter Tremp. Latin America Publishing House, Solothurn 2008, ISBN 978-3-9522966-4-6 .
  • Nunca fui primera dama. Bruguera, Barcelona 2008.
  • Posar desnuda en La Havana. Alfaguara, Mexico City 2011, ISBN 978-60-711-1308-5 .
  • Negra. Anagrama, Barcelona 2013.
  • Domingo de Revolución. Anagrama, Barcelona 2016, ISBN 978-84-339-9810-1 .

Filmography

  • Hello Hemingway (1990)
  • Mes questions sur .. (documentary, 2005)
  • Page 2 (2007)

Honourings and prices

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wendy Guerra presenta 'Domingo de Revolución' en Madrid , in: Diario de Cuba , May 9, 2016 (Spanish)
  2. ↑ Domingo de Revolución , Editorial Anagrama, May 2016 (Spanish)
  3. ^ Sarah Moreno: Escritora cubana recibe importante premio en Francia El Nuevo Herald , September 28, 2016 (Spanish)
personal data
SURNAME Guerra, Wendy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Guerra Torres, Wendy (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Cuban writer
DATE OF BIRTH December 11, 1970
PLACE OF BIRTH Havana