Description
Book SynopsisCuba’s Wild East: A Literary Geography of Oriente recounts a literary history of modern Cuba that has four distinctive and interrelated characteristics. Oriented to the east of the island, it looks aslant at a Cuban national literature that has sometimes been indistinguishable from a history of Havana. Given the insurgent and revolutionary history of that eastern region, it recounts stories of rebellion, heroism, and sacrifice. Intimately related to places and sites which now belong to a national pantheon, its corpus—while including fiction and poetry—is frequently written as memoir and testimony. As a region of encounter, that corpus is itself resolutely mixed, featuring a significant proportion of writings by US journalists and novelists as well as by Cuban writers.
Trade ReviewThis is the work of a mature scholar who has reflected on the subject for a long time; one who has read extensively on the matter, and one who enjoys his subject thoroughly. The merits of the book are many but the most important for me are two: one is taking all the cardinal points, north and south, east and west and putting them in contact with each other. The second is the relationships he establishes between indigenous pasts and colonial and postcolonial writings. Prof. Hulme makes the points of convergences between these stories and history magic.
Ileana RodríguezThroughout all eight essays Hulme’s prose skillfully integrates close textual analysis with detailed historical and geographical contexts, making the book very accessible to readers (like this reviewer) who are allergic to pure disquisitions on texts. Reading Cuba’s Wild East feels like taking an actual trip through the region. The book constitutes a truly exceptional, readable, informative, and significant contribution to the study of Cuban history, culture, and politics.
Raul Fernandez, New West Indian GuideTable of Contents
- List of illustrations and maps
- Note on language and translations
- Introduction
- 1. James J. O’Kelly at Jiguaní (1873)
- 2. José Martí at Vega del Jobo (1895)
- 3. Richard Harding Davis in Santiago de Cuba (1897)
- 4. Edward Stratemeyer at Siboney (1898)
- 5. Andrew Summers Rowan in Bayamo (1898)
- 6. Josephine Herbst in Realengo 18 (1935)
- 7. Antonio Núñez Jimenez on Pico Turquino (1945)
- 8. ‘Less than human’: Guantánamo Bay (2002)
- Envoi
- Glossary
- Acknowledgements
- Bibliography
- Index
