Culture and Customs of Cuba

Culture and Customs of Cuba PDF Author: William Luis
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313007179
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Cuba continues to loom large in U.S. consciousness and politics. Culture and Customs of Cuba is a much-needed resource to give students and other readers an in-depth view of our important island neighbor. Luis, of Cuban descent, provides detailed, clear insight into Cuban culture in its historical context. Religion, customs, economy, media, performing and creative arts, and cinema are some of the many topics discussed. Included in this discussion are contributions of Cubans in exile which Luis considers an inherent part of Cuban culture. Encouraging a wider understanding of Cuba, this volume describes and highlights the cultures and customs of the island. Cuba, as one will learn while reading this book, is an island of many cultural customs that have evolved out of a rich history. Presented in the context of three interrelated periods in Cuban history: the Colonial, the Republic, and Castro's Revolution, this book explores Cuba's dynamic culture. Luis also notes the spread of Cuban culture abroad, where a significant part of the Cuban population has lived since the earl 19th century. Students and others interested in this country will find this book to be extraordinarily helpful and informative.

Culture and Customs of Cuba

Culture and Customs of Cuba PDF Author: William Luis
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313007179
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 216

Get Book Here

Book Description
Cuba continues to loom large in U.S. consciousness and politics. Culture and Customs of Cuba is a much-needed resource to give students and other readers an in-depth view of our important island neighbor. Luis, of Cuban descent, provides detailed, clear insight into Cuban culture in its historical context. Religion, customs, economy, media, performing and creative arts, and cinema are some of the many topics discussed. Included in this discussion are contributions of Cubans in exile which Luis considers an inherent part of Cuban culture. Encouraging a wider understanding of Cuba, this volume describes and highlights the cultures and customs of the island. Cuba, as one will learn while reading this book, is an island of many cultural customs that have evolved out of a rich history. Presented in the context of three interrelated periods in Cuban history: the Colonial, the Republic, and Castro's Revolution, this book explores Cuba's dynamic culture. Luis also notes the spread of Cuban culture abroad, where a significant part of the Cuban population has lived since the earl 19th century. Students and others interested in this country will find this book to be extraordinarily helpful and informative.

A Cultural History of Cuba during the U.S. Occupation, 1898-1902

A Cultural History of Cuba during the U.S. Occupation, 1898-1902 PDF Author: Marial Iglesias Utset
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 0807877840
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
In this cultural history of Cuba during the United States' brief but influential occupation from 1898 to 1902--a key transitional period following the Spanish-American War--Marial Iglesias Utset sheds light on the complex set of pressures that guided the formation and production of a burgeoning Cuban nationalism. Drawing on archival and published sources, Iglesias illustrates the process by which Cubans maintained and created their own culturally relevant national symbols in the face of the U.S. occupation. Tracing Cuba's efforts to modernize in conjunction with plans by U.S. officials to shape the process, Iglesias analyzes, among other things, the influence of the English language on Spanish usage; the imposition of North American holidays, such as Thanksgiving, in place of traditional Cuban celebrations; the transformation of Havana into a new metropolis; and the development of patriotic symbols, including the Cuban flag, songs, monuments, and ceremonies. Iglesias argues that the Cuban response to U.S. imperialism, though largely critical, indeed involved elements of reliance, accommodation, and welcome. Above all, Iglesias argues, Cubans engaged the Americans on multiple levels, and her work demonstrates how their ambiguous responses to the U.S. occupation shaped the cultural transformation that gave rise to a new Cuban nationalism.

Picturing Cuba

Picturing Cuba PDF Author: Jorge Duany
Publisher: University of Florida Press
ISBN: 9781683402091
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Picturing Cuba explores the evolution of Cuban visual art and its links to cubanía, or Cuban cultural identity. Featuring artwork from the Spanish colonial, republican, and postrevolutionary periods of Cuban history, as well as the contemporary diaspora, these richly illustrated essays trace the creation of Cuban art through shifting political, social, and cultural circumstances. Contributors examine colonial-era lithographs of Cuba?s landscape, architecture, people, and customs that portrayed the island as an exotic, tropical location. They show how the avant-garde painters of the vanguardia, or Havana School, wrestled with the significance of the island?s African and indigenous roots, and they also highlight subversive photography that depicts the harsh realities of life after the Cuban Revolution. They explore art created by the first generation of postrevolutionary exiles, which reflects a new identity?lo cubanoamericano, Cuban-Americanness?and expresses the sense of displacement experienced by Cubans who resettled in another country. A concluding chapter evaluates contemporary attitudes toward collecting and exhibiting post-revolutionary Cuban art in the United States. Encompassing works by Cubans on the island, in exile, and born in America, this volume delves into defining moments in Cuban art across three centuries, offering a kaleidoscopic view of the island?s people, culture, and history. Contributors: Anelys Alvarez | Lynnette M. F. Bosch | María A. Cabrera Arús | Iliana Cepero | Ramón Cernuda | Emilio Cueto | Carol Damian | Victor Deupi | Jorge Duany | Alison Fraunhar | Andrea O?Reilly Herrera | Jean-François Lejeune | Abigail McEwen | Ricardo Pau-Llosa | E. Carmen Ramos

Planet/Cuba

Planet/Cuba PDF Author: Rachel Price
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1784781223
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Transformations in Cuban art, literature and culture in the post-Fidel era Cuba has been in a state of massive transformation over the past decade, with its historic resumption of diplomatic relations with the United States only the latest development. While the political leadership has changed direction, other forces have taken hold. The environment is under threat, and the culture feels the strain of new forms of consumption. Planet/Cuba examines how art and literature have responded to a new moment, one both more globalized and less exceptional; more concerned with local quotidian worries than international alliances; more threatened by the depredations of planetary capitalism and climate change than by the vagaries of the nation’s government. Rachel Price examines a fascinating array of artists and writers who are tracing a new socio-cultural map of the island.

Cuba (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize)

Cuba (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize) PDF Author: Ada Ferrer
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501154575
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Book Description
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE IN HISTORY WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE IN HISTORY “Full of…lively insights and lucid prose” (The Wall Street Journal) an epic, sweeping history of Cuba and its complex ties to the United States—from before the arrival of Columbus to the present day—written by one of the world’s leading historians of Cuba. In 1961, at the height of the Cold War, the United States severed diplomatic relations with Cuba, where a momentous revolution had taken power three years earlier. For more than half a century, the stand-off continued—through the tenure of ten American presidents and the fifty-year rule of Fidel Castro. His death in 2016, and the retirement of his brother and successor Raúl Castro in 2021, have spurred questions about the country’s future. Meanwhile, politics in Washington—Barack Obama’s opening to the island, Donald Trump’s reversal of that policy, and the election of Joe Biden—have made the relationship between the two nations a subject of debate once more. Now, award-winning historian Ada Ferrer delivers an “important” (The Guardian) and moving chronicle that demands a new reckoning with both the island’s past and its relationship with the United States. Spanning more than five centuries, Cuba: An American History provides us with a front-row seat as we witness the evolution of the modern nation, with its dramatic record of conquest and colonization, of slavery and freedom, of independence and revolutions made and unmade. Along the way, Ferrer explores the sometimes surprising, often troubled intimacy between the two countries, documenting not only the influence of the United States on Cuba but also the many ways the island has been a recurring presence in US affairs. This is a story that will give Americans unexpected insights into the history of their own nation and, in so doing, help them imagine a new relationship with Cuba; “readers will close [this] fascinating book with a sense of hope” (The Economist). Filled with rousing stories and characters, and drawing on more than thirty years of research in Cuba, Spain, and the United States—as well as the author’s own extensive travel to the island over the same period—this is a stunning and monumental account like no other.

On Becoming Cuban

On Becoming Cuban PDF Author: Louis A. Pérez Jr.
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469601419
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 602

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Book Description
With this masterful work, Louis A. Perez Jr. transforms the way we view Cuba and its relationship with the United States. On Becoming Cuban is a sweeping cultural history of the sustained encounter between the peoples of the two countries and of the ways that this encounter helped shape Cubans' identity, nationality, and sense of modernity from the early 1850s until the revolution of 1959. Using an enormous range of Cuban and U.S. sources--from archival records and oral interviews to popular magazines, novels, and motion pictures--Perez reveals a powerful web of everyday, bilateral connections between the United States and Cuba and shows how U.S. cultural forms had a critical influence on the development of Cubans' sense of themselves as a people and as a nation. He also articulates the cultural context for the revolution that erupted in Cuba in 1959. In the middle of the twentieth century, Perez argues, when economic hard times and political crises combined to make Cubans painfully aware that their American-influenced expectations of prosperity and modernity would not be realized, the stage was set for revolution.

Intimations of Modernity

Intimations of Modernity PDF Author: Louis A. Pérez Jr.
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469631318
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
Louis A. Perez Jr.'s new history of nineteenth-century Cuba chronicles in fascinating detail the emergence of an urban middle class that was imbued with new knowledge and moral systems. Fostering innovative skills and technologies, these Cubans became deeply implicated in an expanding market culture during the boom in sugar production and prior to independence. Contributing to the cultural history of capitalism in Latin America, Perez argues that such creoles were cosmopolitans with powerful transnational affinities and an abiding identification with modernity. This period of Cuban history is usually viewed through a political lens, but Perez, here emphasizing the character of everyday life within the increasingly fraught colonial system, shows how moral, social, and cultural change that resulted from market forces also contributed to conditions leading to the collapse of the Spanish colonial administration. Perez highlights women's centrality in this process, showing how criollas adapted to new modes of self-representation as a means of self-fulfillment. Increasing opportunities for middle-class women's public presence and social participation was both cause and consequence of expanding consumerism and of women's challenges to prevailing gender hierarchies. Seemingly simple actions--riding a bicycle, for example, or deploying the abanico, the fan, in different ways--exposed how traditional systems of power and privilege clashed with norms of modernity and progress.

Fidel Castro and the Quest for a Revolutionary Culture in Cuba

Fidel Castro and the Quest for a Revolutionary Culture in Cuba PDF Author: Julie Marie Bunck
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 9780271040271
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
"An excellent study of political culture, emphasizing cultural and normative resistance to revolutionary values, norms, and goals. Challenges much of the scholarship that maintained that revolution permanently transformed Cuba's traditional culture, and finds that 'most Cuban workers rejected many of the revolutionary requirements of the Castro government' (p. 184). Highly recommended"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 57.

Cuba in the Special Period

Cuba in the Special Period PDF Author: A. Hernandez-Reguant
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230618324
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
This collection examines Cuban cultural production during the Special Period of the 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Bloc. Contributors address the cultural forms; and the associated ethics and practices of labour, leisure, and bureaucratic organization that arose in the transformation of the socialist cultural infrastructure.

The Cuba Reader

The Cuba Reader PDF Author: Aviva Chomsky
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478004568
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 583

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Book Description
Tracking Cuban history from 1492 to the present, The Cuba Reader includes more than one hundred selections that present myriad perspectives on Cuba's history, culture, and politics. The volume foregrounds the experience of Cubans from all walks of life, including slaves, prostitutes, doctors, activists, and historians. Combining songs, poetry, fiction, journalism, political speeches, and many other types of documents, this revised and updated second edition of The Cuba Reader contains over twenty new selections that explore the changes and continuities in Cuba since Fidel Castro stepped down from power in 2006. For students, travelers, and all those who want to know more about the island nation just ninety miles south of Florida, The Cuba Reader is an invaluable introduction.