Ezio Neyra (editor-at-large, Cuba): Reina María Rodríguez—whose brilliant work was featured in our April 2011 issue—is a Cuban poet, narrator and editor who, although well known and recognized within Cuban (literary) territory, is only just beginning to gain an international audience. Thanks in part to receiving the Premio Iberoamericano de Poesía Pablo Neruda—one of the most important literary prizes in the Spanish language—as well as to the exposure afforded by Asymptote‘s own international reach, Rodríguez’s sensitivity, which frequently focuses on the Centro Habana area where she lives, is now reaching readers all around the world.
This combination of locality and apparent isolation also emerges in the text published in Asymptote, where we see Rodríguez inserting herself into the rich Cuban tradition of exploring the particularity of living on an island, taking her rightful place alongside major poets like José Lezama Lima and Virgilio Piñera:
“Water that defines the other shore is always moving, deep inside, behind and below. We don’t look at this ocean, but it reappears at the end of every street. It reappears and conceals itself to demand that we see it. I thought about algae twining through the smoky remains of a landscape, and I felt the demands from that ocean, its oceanquake. Since then, I haven’t gone back to look any more.”
Yet Rodríguez’s “ocean archive” is hardly the only archive in contemporary Cuban literature. Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, a narrator and poet from Leonardo Padura’s generation, is probably the Cuban writer who has most profoundly explored the miseries of Havana. What might sound surreal in any other city is absolutely real in Gutiérrez’s rendering of the Cuban capital, and although he has found some well deserved recognition in Latin America and Spain thanks to the efforts of Anagrama, his Spanish publishing house, English speakers readers still have a gem to discover in his work. I hope to see him featured on Asymptote soon.
So that we can continue beyond our January 2015 issue and introduce Pedro Juan Gutiérrez and other Cuban writers in our pages one day, please consider joining 212 donors in support of our Indiegogo campaign now! Thank you so much!