Beyond Rum and Revolution: Imagining Cuba from the Diaspora
MWF 10:00-10:52pm
What comes to mind when you hear the word “Cuba”? Rum and cigars? Fidel Castro and Che Guevara? Mambo and salsa? Join our class to learn how Cuban Americans envision this island nation and its relationship to the United States. We’ll look beyond popular culture figures like Pitbull and Desi Arnaz to examine fiction, drama, and poetry written in English by writers who are from Cuban American backgrounds.
Our goal will be to complicate the 1960s Cuban exile identity model by researching the generations of Cuban American writers who preceded the 1959 Cuban Revolution as well as those immigration waves that came afterwards. In the process, we will interrogate the political, racial, gender, and sexual stereotypes attached to mainstream depiction of Cubans, as well as consider how Cuban-American authors themselves understand the relationship of their ethnic community to that of other Latinx and minority populations in the United States.
This course fulfills the W2 writing requirement, the “Diversity in the US” CCC requirement, and the Race/Ethnic Literature course requirement for the English major.