If you would like to support the publication of this book, kindly support our crowdfuding effort on the indiegogo platform:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/book-publication-a-bilingual-anthology-of-poetry#/
Here are the details of the forthcoming publication:
AÑORANZAS
/ YEARNINGS: Cuban Women’s Poetry in Exile (1990-2021)
Selection,
translations, notes and introduction by Indranil Chakravarty
I am an Indian writer and a professor of cinema who studied at the International Film School (EICTV) in Havana in the late 1980s. Over the past two years, I have been working on a book project that is purely a labour of love. It is a poetry anthology of Cuban women in exile over the past thirty years. It started as a small tribute to a few creative Cuban women whose lives I have followed over three decades but then the canvas expanded to include many other poets whom I did not know personally. It has taken me a lot of time and effort to select 105 poems by 23 poets in this collection. I have done the English translation of all the poems alongside notes and comments. However, the publication of this anthology has proved very difficult but now we have an Indian publisher with international distribution who is willing to publish provided we raise the funds to cover the basic cost of production. Hence this crowdfunding effort.
All anthologies of Cuban poetry till date have been edited by Cubans. This anthology is a departure. It is edited and translated by a writer who is both an insider and an outsider, thus bringing a fresh perspective, perhaps a simultaneous critical distance and emotional connection for readers beyond the ambit of Cuba and Latin America. Its two time-markers are 1990 (the beginning of its ‘Periodo Especial’ that triggered large-scale migration) and 2021 (a moment of unprecedented large-scale uprisings on July 11). The poets in this collection left their home in the intervening years and even while they developed their professional careers abroad, continued to write poetry in their private moments by way of healing themselves, unable to return to their homeland.
While socialism has fallen apart everywhere else in the world, an authoritarian, repressive regime continues to rule in Cuba. Nothing is more revealing than intimate poetry to express the pain and anguish of thwarted lives and smothered creativity. All the poets in this collection grew up under that rule but left the country to find a more dignified life in exile.
Over the past 30 years, I have experienced from close quarters, the pain, the agony and alienation of many of these excellent poets, who have struggled to 'reboot' their lives in another country while still yearning for their homeland. Today, almost all of Cuba’s bright, sensitive, and cultivated women and men live outside the country and the poignancy of their yearning speaks to us about what it means to lose one’s homeland.
This collection seeks coherence by focussing on women and using specific time-markers that have framed a generation. I have also tried to find a connecting theme – yearning – in a broad existential sense. We hope you will support us to make this publication possible. This is a celebration of poetry and freedom in the most trying of circumstances.
The 23 poets in this collection are:
Maria Cristina Fernandez/ Legna Rodríguez Iglesias/
Dermis Perez Leon/ Lizette Espinosa/ Zoe Valdes/ Eilyn Perez Amores / Gelsys
Garcia/ Damaris Calderon/ Ena
Columbie/ Yosie Crespo/ Ana Maria Pedroso / Alessandra Molina / Eilyn Lombard Cabrera /
Sonia Diaz Corrales / Maria Elena Hernandez Caballero / Maria Elena Peña de
Prada/ Milena Rodriguez Gutierrez/ Odette Alonso Yodu / Lleny Diaz Valdivia /
Kelly Martinez-Grandal/ Elizabeth Mirabal / Gleyvis Coro Montanet / Eva Maria
Vergara.
