Nelson Estupiñán Bass (original) (raw)

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Ecuadorian writer

Nelson Estupiñán Bass
Born (1912-09-19)19 September 1912[1]Súa, Atacames Canton, Esmeraldas Province, Ecuador
Died 3 March 2002(2002-03-03) (aged 89)[2]Hershey, Pennsylvania, United States[3]
Occupation Writer & poet
Notable awards Premio Eugenio Espejo (1993)[4]

Nelson Estupiñán Bass (1912–2002) was an Ecuadorian writer. He was born in Súa, a city in the predominantly Afro-Ecuadorian province of Esmeraldas in Ecuador. He was first homeschooled by his mother before traveling to the capital city of Quito where he graduated from Escuela Superior Juan Montalvo with a degree in public accounting in 1932.[1] Bass identified with the Communist Party during this time and in 1934 had the opportunity to publish two of his poems (Canto a la Negra Quinceañera and Anúteba) in the socialist diary La Tierra.

In 1943, Bass completed the novel, When the Guayacanes Were in Bloom (Cuando Los Guayacanes Florecían), one of his most famous and widely read literary projects throughout Ecuador and Latin America. It was published in 1950 by the Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana. The novel expresses the fraught situation of Afro-Ecuadorians used as pawns to fight for the Conservative Party and Liberal Party during the Liberal Revolution in Ecuador of 1895.[_citation needed_] Bass was influenced by global Pan-Africanism and invoked an identifiably black aesthetic and political project in his writings and lectures during the 1940s and 50s.[5]

In 1962, Bass married Luz Argentina Chiriboga, who later became known for writing on Afro-Ecuadorian and feminist themes.[6] In 1966 Bass was the first president of a regional museum of the national Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana in Esmeraldas called Archaeological Museum "Carlos Mercado Ortiz".[7]

Bass was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1998. While giving a series of lectures in 2002 at Penn State University Bass became ill with pneumonia and succumbed to the deadly illness at the Hershey Medical Center.[3] Bass is remembered as one of Ecuador's most prolific Afro-Latin American writers and represents a South American expression of the African Diaspora

Essays and criticism

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  1. ^ a b "ESTUPIÑAN BASS, Nelson". Enciclopedia del Ecuador (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 28 February 2016.
  2. ^ "Nelson Estupiñán Bass, un guayacán que no se olvida" [Nelson Estupiñán Bass, a guayacán that is not forgotten]. La Hora (in Spanish). 5 August 2010. Archived from the original on 25 June 2016. Retrieved 16 August 2024.
  3. ^ a b ""Remembering Nelson Estupinan Bass (1912-2002)" by Richards, Henry J. - Afro - Hispanic Review, Vol. 22, Issue 1, Spring 2003". Archived from the original on 7 July 2017. Retrieved 6 September 2017.
  4. ^ "Recordando al escritor Nelson Estupiñán Bass" [Remembering the writer Nelson Estupiñán Bass]. La Hora (in Spanish). 5 August 2018. Retrieved 16 August 2024.
  5. ^ Ritter, Jonathan (28–30 May 1999). Articulating Blackness in Afro-Ecuadorian Marimba Performance (PDF). Musical Cultures of the World: Global Effects, Past and Present.
  6. ^ Pérez Pimentel, Rodolfo (2016). "Luz Argentina Chiriboga Guerrero" (in Spanish). Guayaquil, Ecuador: Diccionario Biografico Ecuador. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 23 February 2016.
  7. ^ "Museos de la Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana". Retrieved 28 February 2016.