Filial Crisis and Erotic Politics in Black Cuban Literature: Daughters, Sons, and Lovers

This book proposes an affective reading of twentieth-century Afro-Cuban literature through its focus on a set of concerns ranging from the filial to the erotic. Existing scholarship on black Cuban literature tends to privilege national political and economic discourses often focusing solely on the dynamics of race in the Revolution and the place of the black writer/artist within the nation's cultural institutions. And while there is substantial engagementwith feminist and queer articulations of desire within Cuban literary studies, there remains an urgent need for a sustained analysis of black Cuban writing which investigates its preponderant concerns with themes of family, love and erotic politics-a need fully addressed in this timely book. CONRAD MICHAEL JAMES is Associate Professor of World Cultures and Literatures at the University of Houston. Table of Contents Introduction The Poetry of Race and Sex in the Early Twentieth Century: Nicolás Guillén's Libidinal Politics Crisis and Transgression in the Poetry of Excilia Saldaña Dangerous Patriarchs: Sex and the Dynamics of Literary Vengeance Rebellious Women and Men Without Futures Mothers, Maids and Mistresses: Las criadas de La Habana Afterword Bibliography