As much a storyteller as an ethnographer, Lydia Cabrera was captivated by a strange and magical new world revealed to her by her Afro-Cuban friends in early twentieth-century Havana. In
Afro-Cuban Tales this world comes to teeming life, introducing English-speaking readers to a realm of tenuous boundaries between the natural and the supernatural, deities and mortals, the spiritual and the seemingly inanimate.
Here readers will find a vibrant, imaginative record of African culture transplanted to Cuba and transformed over time, a passionate and subversive alternative to the dominant Western culture of the Americas. In this charmed realm of myth and legend, imaginative flights, and hard realities, Cabrera shows us a world turned upside down. In this domain guinea hens can make dour Asturians and the king of Spain dance; little fat cooking pots might prepare their own meals; the pope can send encyclicals about pumpkins; and officials can be defeated by the shrewdness of tur
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"A marvelous book, with emphasis on marvel as magical. No wonder Cabrera is seen as one of the writers who planted the seed for magical realism."-Danilo H. Figueredo, Multicultural Review -- Danilo H. Figueredo Multicultural Review "It could be argued that the entire school of Latin American 'Magic Realism' begins with Cabrera's Afro-Cuban Tales."-Rocky Mountain Review Rocky Mountain Review "Cabrera's stories reflect a real moment in Cuban history that, in turn, illuminates the past and informs the future."-Norman Weinstein, Journal of American Folklore 123 -- Norman Weinstein Journal of American Folklore 123
