BOOKPATHS

Cuba; John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.

The “Kennedy Library gets Hemingway papers from Cuba.”

Though the Cuban government did not exactly get along with John F. Kennedy, it has come to an arrangement with the Boston library named for the 35th president to give it copies of thousands of papers from Ernest Hemingway. The Boston Globe reported that Cuba’s Ministry of Culture had given the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum copies of 3,000 letters and documents Hemingway amassed during his years in Cuba, from 1939 to 1960. – from “Kennedy Library Gets Hemingway Papers from Cuba,” by Dave Itzkoff, The New York Times

Cuba

Author Leonardo Padura chooses his “top 10 Cuban novels.”

Cuba is a country of poets. It would almost be too easy to select 10 poets or books of poetry that play a key role in the short history of Cuban literature. But there are excellent – and diverse – Cuban novelists, too few of whom are available in English translation. The 10 I've picked here will hopefully give some idea of both the country's literary tradition, and its imaginative life. – Leonardo Padura, The Guardian

Guantánamo Bay, Cuba

Anna Perera tells Michelle Pauli why she’s written a novel about Guantánamo Bay for teenagers.

‘There were times when I didn't want to write it but had no choice,’ says Perera. ‘I wasn't in a state of fury – each day, before I wrote a single word, I meditated and detached from the subject I was writing about. It worked for me because it opened me up. Writers inhabit a space between two worlds; in order to write well you have to go into that space between those two worlds, not always writing consciously. You're opening your mind and allowing words to arrive and that's how I worked on this book. It was the only way I could write about this subject and be at peace.’ – from "Guantánamo for Kinds," by Michelle Pauli, The Guardian

Cuba

Scott Timberg talks with Rachel Kushner, whose novel, Telex From Cuba, “depicts the society’s upheaval through the eyes of children who lived it.”

'It became a treasure hunt in a way: There are no public libraries of any kind in Preston or Nicaro,’ the towns where the novel was set. ‘But I would hear a rumor, like 'so-and-so has every copy of the United Fruit Co. magazine,' and I would show up with this little entourage and knock on their door.’ – from “Breathing Literary Life Into 1950s Cuba,” by Scott Timberg, Los Angeles Times

Cuba

Jane Jakeman talks with Leonardo Padura, whose “prize-winning series of novels about Cuban detective Inspector Mario Conde has changed the face of Latin American crime writing.”

“During his visit to London, I ask Padura, a man of warm and lively empathy, whether he and Conde are one and the same. He explains that Conde is a pair of spectacles through which he can observe Havana.” – from “Leonardo Padura’s Revolution in Crime,” by Jane Jakeman, The Independent

Guantánamo Bay, Cuba

Since 2002, at least 775 men have been held in the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. According to Department of Defense data, fewer than half of them are accused of commiting any hostile act against the United States or its allies. In hundreds of cases, even the circumstances of their initial detainment are questionable. – from Poems from Guantánamo: the Detainees Speak, edited by Marc Falkoff

Poems from Guantánamo: the Detainees Speak, edited by Marc Falkoff (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2007)

Marc Falkoff, professor and pro bono attorney for seventeen Guantánamo prisoners, has collected, with the help of other attorneys, twenty-two poems by seventeen detainees, some “originally written in toothpaste, others scratched onto foam drinking cups with pebbles.” Once collected, publication came slowly, as each line had to be scrutinized by the Pentagon. The voices finally freed in this spare volume tell of atrocities, fears, anger, puzzlement, courage, survival, and, sometimes, a thin thread of hope. “Perhaps,” Marc Falkoff hopes, “their poems will prick the conscience of a nation.”

From “Is it True?”
By Osama Abu kabir

Is it true that the grass grows after rain?
Is it true that flowers will rise up in the Spring?
Is it true that the salmon swim back up their streams?

It is true. This is true. These are miracles.
But is it true that one day we’ll leave Guantánamo Bay?
Is it true that one day we’ll go back to our homes?
I sail in my dreams, I am dreaming of home.

Publisher’s Website

Cuba

Valerie Hemingway takes readers to “Hemingway’s Cuba” in August’s Smithsonian Magazine and in a "web only” article she “talks about pirated novels and Papa’s living legend.”

“A norther was raging over havana, bending and twisting the royal palm fronds against a threatening gray sky. My taxi splashed through the puddles along the Malecón, the majestic coastal road that circles half the city, as fierce waves cascaded over the sea wall and sprayed the footpath and street. Nine miles outside the city I arrived at what I had come to see: Finca Vigía, or Lookout Farm, where Ernest Hemingway had made his home from 1939 to 1960, and where he had written seven books, including The Old Man and the Sea, A Moveable Feast and Islands in the Stream.” – from “Hemingway’s Cuba, Cuba’s Hemingway,” by Valerie Hemingway, Smithsonian Magazine

Cuba

Conor Clarke and Ewen MacAskill report on “American organizations prevented from helping preservation work” at Finca Vigia, Ernest Hemingway’s home from 1939 to 1960.

“For the past two years, a group of American organisations has been working to restore the battered house and save the manuscripts and books. But US sanctions against Cuba have hindered the group's attempts to collaborate with the Cuban government. The Bush administration's response has been mixed, flitting between acquiescence and obstruction.” – from “Bell Tolls for Hemingway Treasures as Cuban House Caught in Sanctions Trap,” by Conor Clarke and Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian

Cuba

“Globe-trotting literary traveler Sarah Anderson” visits Cuba.

“We went to the Hotel Nacional where we sat in the courtyard drinking mojitos and musing over its famous residents: Buster Keaton. Errol Flynn, Marlon Brando, Winston Churchill and of course Ernest Hemingway whose novel, set in Cuba, The Old Man and the Sea, won him the Nobel prize. The Nacional also hosts one of the famous floorshows – the Parisiens – (the other being Tropicana) – we sat drinking cocktails and watched the energetic dancers dressed in a variety of colourful clothes and feathers.” – from “You Haven’t Been to Cuba Yet?” by Sarah Anderson, The Times

Cuba

Rory Carroll reports on Gabriel Garcia Márquez visit, during the week of his 80th birthday, with Fidel Castro.

“They were two old friends, each semi-retired, taking a stroll and catching up on each other's news. But to anyone watching, the sight itself would have been news.” – from Márquez Avoids 80th Birthday Celebration to Walk with Castro,” by Rory Carroll, The Guardian