Palabras íntimas (intimate words) defines the biographical space in the literature of the Cuban diaspora in the United States. Cuba’s long standing tradition of autobiographical writing flourished in the nineteenth century, from the Condesa de Merlín and Juan Francisco Manzano to the personal journals of Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda and José Martí. More contemporary writers have added to the genre in the form of memoirs, confessions, letters, testimony and personal essays, creating an invaluable and informative narrative of historical and cultural events. Elena Palmero continues this tradition by incorporating Cuban-born writers living in the United States, whose body of work is written in Spanish, English, and sometimes in both. This hybridity consigns it to an undefined place in Cuba’s literary canon. Dr. Elena Palmero charts a political and cultural path for this writing, in order to build a diasporic and historical testimony that will, in the course of time, become part of Cuba’s cultural memory.
The author will be introduced by Cuban essayist and poet Lourdes Gil, director of our Literature Program.
HUNTER COLLEGE
Faculty/Staff Room, 8th floor HW
Lexington at 68th Street, NYC
SPACE IS LIMITED
Elena Palmero González is a Cuban essayist living
in Brazil since 1999, where she is a professor of Latin
American Literature at the Universidade Federal do Rio
de Janeiro. She has a PhD in Philology from the Universidad
Central de Las Villas, Cuba, and did post-doctoral work
at the Sorbonne in Paris and at the Universidade de Sao Paulo. She has published widely in Latin America, Europe
and Canada, and is currently on a CAPES Research
Fellowship at Yale University.
This event will be held in Spanish.
Presented with the promotional support of Diario de Cuba
