As a perfect coda to our three innovative workshops on Cuban ethnologist Lydia Cabrera (1899-1991) during our Spring Season, which explored little known aspects of her life and legacy, the CCCNY wraps up its celebration of the 120th anniversary year of her birth with a fall lecture by foremost Cabrera scholar Mariela Gutiérrez. Regarded by some critics as the most valuable Cuban woman writer of the 20th century, Cabrera’s opus is wide-ranging. Her books Cuentos negros de Cuba (1940), ¿Por qué… (1948) y Ayapá: Cuentos de Jicotea (1971) constitute, together with Nicolas Guillén’s poetry, the most outstanding manifestations of Afro-Cuban literature, in addition to her ethnological chef-d’oeuvre, El Monte (1954), a monumental anthropological volume of close to six hundred pages. Her works touch on the folklore, religion, social sciences and literature of the Afro-Cuban universe.
Prof. Gutiérrez will illustrate how Lydia Cabrera’s oeuvre has helped to better understand the particular synthesis of certain arresting elements that were extremely important in the making of the Cuban nation, in which the Afro-Cuban legacy has played a fundamental role. As Gutiérrez points out, without the scientific and literary works of Lydia Cabrera, Cuban history would be a history without metaphor, that transcendental metaphor that characterizes Cuba’s national soul/spirit. It is a primordial and necessary topic to fully understand the glory and pride of Cuba’s cultural legacy.
Mariela Gutiérrez will be presented by Cuban poet and essayist Lourdes Gil, director of the CCCNY Literature Program and designer and coordinator of the Lydia Cabrera 120th Anniversary Celebration series.
This literary presentation is part of the CreateNYC Language Access program, and it will be held in Spanish.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
School of International & Public Affairs
Conference Room 802
Amsterdam Ave. @ 118th St., NYC
SPACE IS LIMITED
FREE ADMISSION
RSVP at: info@cubanculturalcenter.org
[Pictured above: Lydia Cabrera (second from right) with a group of informants, Central Cuba, undated. Cuban Heritage Collection at the University of Miami Libraries, Coral Gables, Florida.]
Dr. Mariela A. Gutiérrez is Distinguished Professor Award recipient and full Professor of Spanish at the University of Waterloo, Canada. She specializes in Afro-Hispanic Studies and 20th century Latin American Women Writers. Her many publications on the work of renowned Cuban writer Lydia Cabrera have brought her national and international recognition and many awards, including the Award for Excellence in Research in 2006. Among her chief publications are: Lydia Cabrera: Aproximaciones mítico-simbólicas a su cuentística (Verbum 1997), El Monte y las Aguas: Ensayos Afrocubanos (Editorial Hispano-Cubana 2003), An Ethnological Interpretation of the Afro-Cuban World of Lydia Cabrera (The Edwin Mellen Press 2008) and Afro-Cuban Short Stories by Lydia Cabrera in Translation (The Edwin Mellen Press 2008); she has authored over a hundred referenced articles in scholarly journals, book chapters and essays.
This presentation is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
