Since Columbus arrived in 1492 and called Cuba "the most beautiful country that human eyes have ever seen,” few places on earth have evoked such passion. The thirty-one writers in Cuba in Mind offer ample proof of the fascinations that have lured generations of travelers.
In this richly varied anthology of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, we hear from such famous visitors as Anthony Trollope, Langston Hughes, Ernest Hemingway, and Graham Greene. Poets and journalists offer their responses, from Allen Ginsberg and Jayne Cortez to Alma Guillermoprieto and Robert Stone; and novelists weigh in with such fictional portrayals as Elmore Leonard's Cuba Libre and Pico Iyer's Cuba and the Night. Cuban exiles, immigrants, and their offspring provide their unique perspective, from Cristina García's essay "Simple Life” to excerpts from Oscar Hijuelos's novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love and from Carlos Eire's memoir Waiting for Snow in Havana. Embracing salsa and santeria, politics and baseball, the island's sparkling beaches and the teeming Havana streets, Cuba in Mind captures the vibrancy, the contradictions, the heat and the humor of Cuba as shown by some of the best writers in the English language.
Contributors:
Thomas Barbour • José Barreiro • Ruth Behar • William Cullen Bryant • Jayne Cortez • Stephen Crane • Andrei Codrescu • Eleanor Early • Carlos Eire • Kimi Eisele • Cristina García • Allen Ginsberg • Graham Greene • Alma Guillermoprieto • Elizabeth Hanly • Ernest Hemingway • Consuelo Hermer • Oscar Hijuelos • Langston Hughes • Pico Iyer • Elmore Leonard • Rosa Lowinger • Marjorie May • Tom Miller • Holly Morris • Ricardo Pau-Llosa • Robert Stone • Jim Shepard • Isadora Tattlin • Anthony Trollope • Walter D. Wilcox

Introduction

Travelers

Anthony Trollope
from The West Indies and the Spanish Main
William Cullen Bryant
“Letter XLVIII” from Letters of a Traveller
Walter D. Wilcox
“Among the Mahogany Forests of Cuba”
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Eleanor Early
from Ports of the Sun
Consuelo Hermer and Marjorie May
from Havana Mañana: A Guide to Cuba and the Cubans
Robert Stone
“Havana Then and Now”

Alma Guillermoprieto
from Looking for History: Dispatches from Latin America
Andrei Codrescu
from Ay, Cuba!
Kimi Eisele
“The Flesh, the Bones, and the Beating Heart”
1
Expatriates, Real and Imagined
Elmore Leonard
from Cuba Libre
Stephen Crane
“The Clan of No-Name”

Graham Greene
from Our Man in Havana
Ernest Hemingway
from “The Great Blue River”

Jim Shepard
“Batting Against Castro”
1
Isadora Tattlin
from Cuba Diaries: An American Housewife in Havana
Aficionados
Langston Hughes
“Havana Nights”

Jayne Cortez
“Visita” and “In 1985 I Met Nicolás Guillén”

Allen Ginsberg
from an interview with Allen Young in Gay Sunshine
Elizabeth Hanly
“Santería: An Alternative Pulse”
1
Pico Iyer
from Cuba and the Night
Tom Miller
from Trading with the Enemy: A Yankee Travels Through Castro’s Cuba
Holly Morris
“Adventure Divas”

Thomas Barbour
from A Naturalist in Cuba
Exiles, Immigrants, and Their Offspring
Oscar Hijuelos
from The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love
Ruth Behar
“In the Absence of Love”

Cristina García
“Simple Life”

Carlos Eire
“Trece” from Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy
Ricardo Pau-Llosa
“Charada China”

Rosa Lowinger
“Repairing Things”

José Barriero
from The Indian Chronicles

While teaching in the English Department at Hunter College of the City University of New York, Maria Finn Domìnguez designed and taught a writing course for CUNY students at Casa de las Americas in Havana, Cuba. She works as a freelance writer and has written for, among many others, The New York Times, Audubon Magazine, and the Anchorage Daily News, and she has been a commentator for Alaska Public Radio. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College and has published literary work in magazines such as The Chicago Review, New Letters, and Exquisite Corpse. She has lived and worked in Alaska, Guatemala, and Spain, and traveled extensively throughout Latin America. She and her husband, Rafael Dominguez, met in Havana, Cuba. They now live in Brooklyn, New York.