Tale
Afro-Cuban Tales
Cuentos negros de Cuba
Lydia Cabrera · 1936
Synopsis
Twenty-two Afro-Cuban folk tales, collected by Lydia Cabrera, in which turtle-men, tiger-men and elephant-men appear. In Bregantino Bregantín, men are banished and women live with a single bull; elsewhere, the satire targets racism and the Church. The language mixes the Creole Spanish of the former slaves with Lucumí, Congo and Abakuá words, whose meaning has sometimes been lost.
Context
The book first appeared in French, from Gallimard in 1936, under the title Contes nègres de Cuba, in the translation by Francis de Miomandre; the Spanish edition followed in 1940, with a preface by Fernando Ortiz, who calls it the first book by a woman born in the city. A second collection, Pourquoi, appeared from the same publisher in 1954. The English translation by Alberto Hernández-Chiroldes and Lauren Yoder came out in 2004, more than sixty years later.
Who it is for
Brief tales, between ethnology and fiction; they can be read in French since 1936 and in English since 2004.
Prizes and reception
No prize. According to Ann Morgan, the book left a mark on later writers, including Alejo Carpentier.
Sources for this page 4
The pages consulted to check this page.