novelists-from-cuba

"For many years I have said, following the tradition of Nicolás Guillén, Fernando Ortiz and Alejo Carpentier, that whoever wants to understand Cuba cannot ignore its mestizo condition in which the Hispanic and African components cannot be divided because they have created a cosmovisión that is authentically original."

"Cuba is a ghost that feeds my literature...The seedling of what I am today took root on that island. But, that Cuba no longer exists, except for in my memories and my generation’s collective imagination. This is why it is a mythical and real land at the same time, which continues to sustain my ideas and dreams."

"Exile was where I was able to complete the amended or mutilated spaces that I was still missing to understand Cuba’s history. My novels, riddled with ghosts, journeys in time, mythological reinterpretations, are how I try to give a coherent image so as to reconstruct that incomplete reality which I was shown."

"Man is a political animal in certain societies, but it is also an emotional and imaginative animal in any context. Its spirituality is a lot more powerful and omnipresent than politics. My characters might be influenced by political events, but politics isn’t what governs in their lives, but spirituality. A citizen in any Western country could describe themselves as a political animal”; but a druid priest, masai or pygmy in Africa, an indigenous person from the Caribbean in pre-historic times or even the Amazon today, doesn’t follow these parameters. According to these cultures, the spirit and emotions are a lot more important."

"It’s as if Ray Bradbury had married Michael Ende and occasionally flirted with Anais Nin.”"

"The first person to name that movement "Magical Realism," to give a label to that, was Alejo Carpentier. He was living with the surrealists in France and the surrealists were inventing this wonderful new thing of printing together on a dissecting table, a sewing machine and an umbrella, and that was surrealism. And Alejo Carpentier realized that this was an intellectual process that had its roots, and he could see the umbrella and the sewing machine on this dissecting table in Latin America because it was part of our culture. Kafka would have been a realist if he would have lived in Mexico. So Alejo Carpentier realized that, and he abandoned the surrealists and searched in our roots, in our history, in our legends, in our folklore. He was the first one to label it. And it was wonderful because it was like giving permission to other writers to finally use their own voices. Because before that our writers were always trying to imitate Europeans, or North Americans, and were denying all our Indian background, our African influence, our own languages, and legends, and myths. This was just an open door for all that. I think that was the beginning of the Boom. That really gave a lot of people permission to do anything. But it's not a literary device, it's part of our life. The magic is still there."

"Alejo Carpentier was absolutely wonderful. The Kingdom of the Earth is an exquisite little novel-it's brilliant."

"I’m more worried about exploring new subjects and places that give me interesting information, than speculate about what other people can think or say about my work. Life is getting shorter and shorter and I want to make the most of mine."

"I would like my readers to levitate when they read the novel. I believe that there is too much violence and coarseness in the world, not just in books, but on television as well. People become degraded when they overuse these things. As I writer, I feel it is my challenge to come up with a phrase that can convey all the anguish a human being feels and to express it in a poetic way. Literature becomes simplistic when two out of every three words are vulgarisms. It requires no effort on the part of the creator or the reader."

"In life, reality and fantasy are blended, and I deliberately look for that connection in my work. It gives me pleasure to do so"

"I never keep a fixed schedule. I like to write for a while, move around, read, drink something, come back. But when I’ve entered the world of the novel, that demands more concentration. It’s hard to even write a letter, because it means leaving that world. To put aside the typewriter and take out letter paper, or stop because you have to pay the phone bill, is terrible…"

"I’ve always been very interested in the short story. Compared to the often exhausting world of the novel, the short story offers a quicker reward, and there’s something appealing about its greater spontaneity…"

"The writer has a fundamental responsibility to write well or to write the best he can, because if he doesn’t he’s not a writer. And when a writer writes, he’s always referring to a social and historical context…"

"In exile one is nothing but a ghost ... I ceased to exist when I went into exile."

"He was a man full of hatred … Che Guevara executed dozens and dozens of people who never once stood trial and were never declared guilty … In his own words, he said the following: "At the smallest of doubt we must execute." And that's what he did at the Sierra Maestra and the prison of Las Cabanas."

"I am old enough to remember when there was no Amnesty International. I am also old enough to remember a Cuba before Fidel Castro. Indeed, my seemingly simple life trajectory dramatically changed course right as the two were coming into existence. In 1960, at the age of 23, I was taken away at gunpoint in the night for refusing to place a sign on my desk that read, “I’m with Fidel.” One year later, Amnesty International was founded, and I became one of their first prisoners of conscience."