Lydia Cabrera (1900-1991), an upper-class white Cuban intellectual, spent many years traveling through Cuba collecting oral histories, stories, and music from Cubans of African descent. Her work is commonly viewed as an extension of the work of her famous brother-in-law, Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz, who initiated the study of Afro-Cubans and the concept of transculturation. Here, Edna Rodriguez-Mangual challenges this perspective, proposing that Cabrera's work offers an alternative to the hegemonizing national myth of Cuba articulated by Ortiz and others. Rodriguez-Mangual examines Cabrera's ethnographic essays and short stories in context. By blurring fact and fiction, anthropology and literature, Cabrera defied the scientific discourse used by other anthropologists. She wrote of Afro-Cubans not as objects but as subjects, and in her writings whiteness, instead of blackness, is gazed upon as the ""other."" As Rodriguez-Mangual demonstrates, Cabrera rewrote the history of Cuba and its culture through imaginative means, calling into question the empirical basis of anthropology and placing Afro-Cuban contributions at the center of the literature that describes the Cuban nation and its national identity.

About the Author
Edna M. Rodriguez-Mangual is assistant professor of Spanish at Texas Christian University, where she also teaches courses on Latin American literature, culture, and film.

Reviews
"Not only does Rodriguez-Mangual present Lydia Cabrera as someone who has surpassed Fernando Ortiz's hegemonic national project, but she also makes Cabrera the true leader of 'transculturation' in Cuba." - Mariela A. Gutierrez, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada"



Book Information
ISBN 9780807855546
Author Edna M. Rodriguez-Plate
Format Paperback
Page Count 216
Imprint The University of North Carolina Press
Publisher The University of North Carolina Press
Weight(grams) 264g