Afro-Cuban Voices: On Race and Identity in Contemporary Cuba

Based on the vivid firsthand testimony of prominent Afro-Cubans who live in Cuba, this book of interviews looks at ways that race affects daily life on the island. While celebrating their racial and national identity, the collected voices express an urgent need to end the silences and distortions of history in both pre-and post-revolutionary Cuba. The 14 people interviewed - of different generations and from different geographic areas of Cuba - come from the arts, the media, industry, academia and medicine. All responded to four controversial questions: What is it like to be black in Cuba? How has the revolution made a difference? To what extent is that difference true today? What can be done? Exposing the contradictions of both racial stereotyping and cultural assimilation, their answers make the case that the issue of race in Cuba, no matter how hard to define, will not be ignored.