The New York City launch of Lluvia de piedras (Ediciones Furtivas, 2023), the last collection of poems by Lourdes Gil, widely regarded as one of the best Cuban poets of her generation. The presentation will also serve as a tribute to her poetic oeuvre and intellectual legacy, and will include an overview of the book by the distinguished literary critic Elena Palmero, whose in-depth study of Gil’s poetry appears in the volume as way of epilog.
The celebratory tribute will take place at the Newman Library’s Valentín Lizana y Parragué Room at Baruch College, where the poet and essayist taught Latin American studies for more than two decades, and where a scholarship was established in her name. The event will be hosted by her colleague Hedwig Feit, Professor Emerita of Baruch College, and introduced by Iraida Iturralde, president of the CCCNY, both personal friends of Lourdes Gil. There will also be a selected reading of poems by some of her students.
About Lluvia de piedras:
Among the most consequential poets and essayists of her generation, Lourdes Gil addresses, head on, COVID-19’s impact as a collective trauma and traces an agonizing journey through darkness to dawn. Depicting what the poet describes as ‘una noche interminable,’ Lluvia de piedras unveils the existential confrontation with our frailty and fragility, the impermanence of life, and the prospect of mortality. Deeply personal yet universal, and written in incandescent and soaring language, the poet testifies to humanity’s transcendent spirit and indomitable will to survive. Invoking the perennial cycles of the natural world, Gil’s telluric vision ultimately posits the possibility of healing, regeneration, beauty, and rebirth.
—Andrea O’Reilly Herrera
[Image above: Lluvia de piedras, by Aurora de Armendi, the book’s illustrator.]
Copies of the book will be made available for purchase by publisher Karime Bourzac, from Ediciones Furtivas.
Baruch College
NEWMAN LIBRARY
151 East 25th Street
(off Lexington), NYC
This event is part of our CreateNYC Language Access Series on Cuban History, Art, and Literature. It will be held in Spanish, with a introductory welcome in English.
SPACE IS LIMITED
PLEASE RSVP at: info@cubanculturalcenter.org
Lourdes Gil distinguished herself as an intellectual, poet and essayist, and university professor. She was born in Havana, Cuba and left the island in 1961 as part of the Pedro Pan children’s exodus. Her passion for writing became manifest at an early age, and continued to grow during her years at the Colegio del Apostolado in Havana and then in high school in the United States. She studied literature at Saint Peter’s College, Universidad Complutense University in Madrid, New York University and Fordham University. She co-directed the literary magazines Románica (1975-1982) and Lyra (1987-1990). Her poetry and her essays on Cuban art and literature of the diaspora have been included in numerous magazines and encyclopedias. She is the author of several poetry collections, including Neumas (1977), Manuscrito de la niña ausente (1979), Vencido el fuego de las especies (1983), Blanca aldaba preludia (1989), Empieza la ciudad (1993), El cerco de las transfiguraciones (1996), and Anima Vagula (2014), as well as a book of essays Viaje por las zonas templadas: arte y literatura cubanos de la extrainsularidad (forthcoming), and several collections of poetry and essays, still unpublished. Gil’s work was recognized twice by the Cintas Fellowship for Poetry, and she received many other literary awards, including fellowships from the Ford Foundation and the Geraldine R Dodge Foundation, and residencies as guest writer at the Poetry Society of America, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Casa Andrés Bello in Caracas, Venezuela, the US-Japan Foundation, among other recognitions.
Lourdes Gil maintained a long collaboration with the Cuban Cultural Center of New York, where she played an invaluable role as frequent speaker, a member of its board of directors, advisor at its Congreso Anual, and Director of the Literature Program and the Martí Studies Program until 2021. For more than two decades she served as a professor of Latin American history and culture at the Weissman School of Art and Science at Baruch College, CUNY, where she developed new courses and crafted new topics and pedagogic tools to modernize and enhance the teaching of Latin American culture, making invaluable contributions to the Department of Black and Latino Studies, the Feit Interdisciplinary Seminars, the Myrna Chase Seminars for Freshmen, and the Department of Modern Languages and Comparative Literature, while providing mentorship to the Latin American Student Clubs and the student community at large. In 2020, in recognition of her long and distinguished academic career at Baruch College, a scholarship was established in her name. Lourdes Gil passed in the spring of 2023, leaving a rich literary legacy.
This event is presented in association with the Initiative for the Study of Latin America and the Department of Modern Languages and Comparative Literature at Baruch College
And is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
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