Corporeal Readings of Cuban Literature and Art: The Body, the Inhuman, and Ecological Thinking

Tracing corporeality and materiality
across Cuban texts and images of the twentieth century

This
volume looks at Cuban literature and art that challenge traditional
assumptions about the body. Examining how writers and artists have depicted racial,
gender, and species differences throughout the past century, Christina García
identifies historical continuities in the way they have emphasized the shared
materiality of bodies. García
shows how these works interact with ecologies of the human and nonhuman across
diverse media, time periods, and ideologies.

García
examines corporeality in a variety of works, including the poetry of Nicolás
Guillén and experimental writings of Severo Sarduy; transspecies drawings,
paintings, and sculptures by Roberto Fabelo; Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s popular
queer film Fresa y chocolate; and contemporary narrative fictions by
Ena Lucía
Portela, Antonio José Ponte, and Ahmel Echevarría. Using the lenses of new
materialism, critical race studies, critical animal studies, queer studies, and
poststructuralism, García engages with Cuban cultural production at the
intersection of diverse social issues.

In
this book, García explores how certain artistic practices focus on portraying
ecological relationships instead of recognizable subjects or shared identity.
Corporeal Readings of Cuban Literature and Art demonstrates that through
their attention to the connections that different kinds of bodies share, Cuban creators
have long undermined rules of classification and unification, reimagining
community as shared vulnerability and difference.

Publication
of this work made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American
Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.