Cuban Literature Illustrates Foundation of Miami Libraries
By Michelle Sheldone
Originally Published in the Calle Ocho News December 10, 2021
Miami-Dade residents have been discovering a place where they can stage and enjoy theatre presentations and seminars, record audio and video projects and gather with business associates and like-minded hobbyists.
The Hialeah Gardens Branch Library opened in February and, like others in an evolving Miami-Dade Library System, lends tablets. The library is also part of a one-stop Internet "shop" for free music downloads and virtual class registrations.
A foundation of public libraries nevertheless remains the same as it has since the beginning: literature -- including that which has been off-limits in the authors' native Cuba. This year, as writers in Cuba have reportedly been arrested and imprisoned, the Library System celebrates 50 years of providing access to historical accounts, adventures, mysteries and more that educate and entertain.
Miami-Dade residents have access to the works of authors whose manuscripts were confiscated in Cuba and smuggled out of it, that landed them prison time and aided the quest for amnesty.
Some of the Library System’s most extensive Cuban collections are at a Main Library that shares space with a HistoryMiami Museum and at a Hispanic Library nearer Calle Ocho in Little Havana.
The Hispanic Library particularly is designed to preserve the cultural heritage of Cubans and a growing variety of Hispanics who reside amid the botanicas, salons, markets and eateries along Little Havana roads, alleys and thoroughfares.
What this public building lacks in the size and sizzle of Hialeah Gardens it compensates for in substantive literature.
Library patrons can enjoy the acclaimed “Three Trapped Tigers” by award-winning exile Guillermo Cabrera Infante,
Miami-Dade libraries also carry the works of Reinaldo Arenas, who was reportedly relegated to a labor camp because of his homosexuality and then imprisoned for smuggling manuscripts to France for publication.
Severo Sarduy, who contributed to pro-Marxist papers and wrote about male homosexuality and transvestism, is also represented at the libraries.
Cuba’s opposition to counterrevolutionary authors and intellectuals like these has been attributed to poet Heberto Padilla, who opened Cuba’s first press agency in Moscow.
Readers who are new to Padilla and other Cuban authors are introduced to many of them in “¡Cubanísimo! The Vintage Book of Contemporary Cuban Literature.”
The book includes the poems and diaries of José Martí, the “father of Cuban literature," and the works of internationally recognized authors Alejo Carpentier, Nicolas Guillen and Jose Lezama Lima.
Also included in ¡Cubanísimo! is Ana Menendez’s “In Cuba I was a German Shepherd,” in which the Miami transplant explores whether people can or want to exceed their origins.
About Miami-Dade's Golden Celebration
The Miami-Dade Library System in November launched its golden anniversary year with commemorative gold library cards and a "Libraries are Timeless" exhibit.
The exhibit takes place at the Main Library, 101 West Flagler Street, at least through January 29.
County-wide activities, exhibits, and author events are also planned.
For more information about the library system’s golden anniversary, visit the Miami-Dade Public Library System website.
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