Daisy Rubiera Castillo's Reyita: "Mujer Negra": From Objectified Symbol to Empowered Subject (original) (raw)

Nancy Morejón, Nicolás Guillén, and the Still-Necessary Marronage in Contemporary Cuba

SMALL AXE, 2021

This intersectional and epistemological study of Nancy Morejón’s 1982 Nación y mestizaje en Nicolás Guillén resolves the tension, which intrigued most of her critics, between her political commitment and sophisticated lyricism. The author examines Morejón’s unquestionable revolutionary support and adhesion to Guillén’s conceptualization of la nación mestiza—instrumental for the cohesiveness promoted by the revolutionary regime—through the comprehensive analysis of her family socioeconomic background, the coincidence of her arrival to adolescence with the revolutionary triumph in 1959, and her affiliation to the editorial group El Puente (1961–65). Intersectionality allows an understanding of how Morejón’s self-identification and self-representation as a black revolutionary female writer condition her elaboration of counternarratives that thwart the Eurocentric and patriarchally constructed national history. The essay reveals rarely examined contradictions between Morejón’s and Guillén’s poetry and discusses how the writers’ shared essentialist views on nationhood fail to ultimately deconstruct the hegemonic Eurocentric epistemology they vowed to upend.

A Black Line on a Blank Slate: The Afro-Cuban Testimonio of Reyita

Cuban nationalism since the late nineteenth century has founded itself on a miscegenous ideology that there is no race, just Cuban. The difficulty that arises with such an ideology is that the realities of racial difference become ignored in favour of the ideologies of national similitude. This paper analyzes the work of the Cuban testimonio writing Reyita: The Life of a Black Cuban Woman in the Twentieth Century (1996) that tells a story from the perspective of a black woman named Reyita. Reyita tells of the ongoing racial prejudice she received while growing up as an Afro-Cuban woman in eastern Cuba during the early twentieth century. Her testimony beckons the recognition of racial difference and stereotypes inherent in her past, thus challenging the old Cuban ideology of a nation without race. Whereas Cuban history has idealized a blank slate whereby no race exists, Reyita, through her testimony, inserts a black streak across history's colourless slate. This paper analyzes how this testimonial challenges historical ideologies and calls to attention the importance of racial difference in Cuban and Caribbean culture.

Mujer Afrocubana: The Complexity of Identity for Afro Cuban Women

In this paper, a exploration of colonial history, Iberian legal tradition, Cuban history, African diasporization, and social theory attempt to frame the complex identity crisis that Afro Cuban women navigate. Reconciling racial dynamics (along with gender, sexuality, and class) with the revolutions in Cuba occurred bring the conversation to the current state of affairs for Afro Cuban women. Special topics like the hip hop movement and Afro Cuban lesbians are briefly investigated.

Building Bridges V -- Cubans Without Borders: Mujeres Unidas Por Su Historia

2003

Part I of this Essay traces the role of women in Cuban society throughout history. It includes a review of the development of Cuban laws concerning women, and women's role in developing them. This Part also addresses laws pertaining to women that were adopted by the present revolutionary regime. Part II sets out laws, beyond the laws of Cuba, that address the issue of gender/sex equality. It focuses on international norms that protect sex equality pertinent to women in Cuba as well as to Cuban women outside of Cuba. It also reviews U.S. laws on equality as they affect Cuban women within U.S. borders. Part III turns to look at culture and its function in defining the reality of Cuban women on the island as well as in the U.S. The work concludes that culture trumps law: cultural assumptions about sex roles have persisted in Cuban societies whether within the island or in the Cuban community within the U.S.; further study is likely to reveal additional commonalities with respect to...

La Lucha Mujerista: Krudas CUBENSI and Black Feminist Sexual Politics in Cuba

This essay analyzes the discursive intervention of the Cuban Underground hip-hop group, Las Krudas CUBENSI, whose members are Black feminist activists. From 1998 to 2006, their work in Cuba centered on challenging the oppressive discourses concerning Black women and Black lesbians within Cuban society. Las Krudas link Black women‘s, particularly Black lesbians‘, oppression to the ideological legacies of colonialism. I argue that Las Krudas‘ feminist discourse is a Black feminist critique because of their choice of art, particularly hip-hop, as a political aesthetic. Las Krudas‘ feminist discourse has become a key discourse within the hip-hop community. The data for this essay are drawn from ethnography, textual analysis, and interviews collected from 1998 to 2006.

Afro-Cuban Voices: On Race and Identity in Contemporary Cuba (review)

Cuban Studies, 2003

A pesar de marcar hitos importantes en la vigorosa producción de las poetas cubanas de todos los tiempos, el recorrido por la poesía social femenina omite algunas poetas mayores que han surgido en el exilio. Vocación de Casandra cumple una tarea importante en las letras cubanas: iniciar la re-escritura de Lo cubano en la poesía desde la barrera del género, y poner el acento en una de las voces poéticas más valientes e importantes del presente siglo.