Ay, Cuba!
A Socio-Erotic Journey
Published on 19. May 2015
248 pages
978-1-5040-1799-2 (ISBN)
Description
The NPR reporter offers an "engaging and enlightening" window into late-90s Cuba, "from the cafes in Havana to the mysterious lairs of Santiago de Cuba" (
Kirkus Reviews).
For NPR commentator Andrei Codrescu, reporting from Cuba on the eve of Pope John Paul II's 1998 visit was an opportunity to understand the realities of life in a country that has long been the subject of stereotypes and misconceptions. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba was the last place to witness a "laboratory of pre-post-communism," as it toed the line between its socialist past and its uncertain future.
On the streets of Havana and the beaches of Santiago de Cuba, Codrescu met people from all walks of life-from prostitutes and fortunetellers to bureaucrats and writers-eager to share their stories. Uncensored and compassionate, his interviews reveal a world where destruction and beauty, poverty and pride exist side by side. Traveling with photographer David Graham, whose powerful images illustrate the energy pulsing through everyday life in Cuba, Codrescu captures the humanity of a nation that is lost when it's reduced to a political symbol. With the United States resuming relations with Cuba for the first time in decades, Ay, Cuba!is more relevant now than ever before.
For NPR commentator Andrei Codrescu, reporting from Cuba on the eve of Pope John Paul II's 1998 visit was an opportunity to understand the realities of life in a country that has long been the subject of stereotypes and misconceptions. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba was the last place to witness a "laboratory of pre-post-communism," as it toed the line between its socialist past and its uncertain future.
On the streets of Havana and the beaches of Santiago de Cuba, Codrescu met people from all walks of life-from prostitutes and fortunetellers to bureaucrats and writers-eager to share their stories. Uncensored and compassionate, his interviews reveal a world where destruction and beauty, poverty and pride exist side by side. Traveling with photographer David Graham, whose powerful images illustrate the energy pulsing through everyday life in Cuba, Codrescu captures the humanity of a nation that is lost when it's reduced to a political symbol. With the United States resuming relations with Cuba for the first time in decades, Ay, Cuba!is more relevant now than ever before.
More details
Persons
ANDREI CODRESCU (www.codrescu.com) is the editor of
Exquisite Corpse: A Journal of Books & Ideas(www.corpse.org). Born in Romania, Codrescu immigrated to the United States in 1966. His first collection of poetry,
License to Carry a Gun(1970), won the Big Table Younger Poets Award, and his latest,
So Recently Rent a World: New and Selected Poems: 1968-2012(2012), was a National Book Award finalist. He is the author of the novels
The Blood Countess,
Messi@,
Casanova in Bohemia, and
Wakefield. His other titles include
Zombification: Essays from NPR;
The Disappearance of the Outside: A Manifesto for Escape;
New Orleans, Mon Amour;
The Hole in the Flag: A Romanian Exile's Story of Return and Revolution;
Ay, Cuba!: A Socio-Erotic Journey;
The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara and Lenin Play Chess;
Whatever Gets You through the Night: A Story of Sheherezade and the Arabian Entertainments;
The Poetry Lesson; and
Bibliodeath: My Archives (With Life in Footnotes
).
Codrescu is the recipient of an ACLU Freedom of Speech Award, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship for poetry, and the Peabody Award for the movie Road Scholar. Until retiring in 2009, he was the MacCurdy Distinguished Professor of English at Louisiana State University.
DAVID GRAHAM (b. 1952) is a photographer known for his exploration of contemporary American culture and landscape. His work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and has been published inthe New York Times Magazine, Fortune, Forbes, and Details. He lives in Pennsylvania and is a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.
Codrescu is the recipient of an ACLU Freedom of Speech Award, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship for poetry, and the Peabody Award for the movie Road Scholar. Until retiring in 2009, he was the MacCurdy Distinguished Professor of English at Louisiana State University.
DAVID GRAHAM (b. 1952) is a photographer known for his exploration of contemporary American culture and landscape. His work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and has been published inthe New York Times Magazine, Fortune, Forbes, and Details. He lives in Pennsylvania and is a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.
Content
- Contents
- Note to the Reader
- List of Photographs
- Introduction
- Prologue
- Cuba on My Mind
- "Why Are You Going to Cuba?"
- In Transit
- In the Air
- Havana
- Day One: "Underage fusion brought me this far"
- Day Two: "Twitch: so little or too long, amigo"
- Day Three: "This corpse is called La Lucha"
- Day Four: "I was in arrears to my bad persona"
- Day Five: "The proletariat was thoroughly eroticized"
- Day Six
- Day Seven: "Almost Persian at 15,000 meters"
- Day Eight: "Today Castro declared Christmas legal"
- Day Nine: A Day Without a Corpse
- Day Ten: "The dictatorship of the proletariat has collapsed"
- Day Eleven: Pilgrimage and Penance
- Day Twelve: "Ravens for the forklift"
- Epilogue: Ay, Cuba!
- Image Gallery
- Notes
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- About the Photographer
