The Fiction of Cuba’s Special Period

doi:10.1017/9781009168359.034

33 - The Fiction of Cuba’s Special Period

from Part V - Cuba and Its Diasporas into the New Millennium

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 August 2024

Esther Whitfield

Edited by

Vicky Unruh and

Jacqueline Loss

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Vicky Unruh: Affiliation:
University of Kansas
Jacqueline Loss: Affiliation:
University of Connecticut

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Summary

This chapter examines the abundance of Cuban fiction that emerged in the “Special Period in Times of Peace,” roughly between the period’s official designation in 1990 and the mid-2000s, as well as major scholarship on the period. Positing the “living ruin” as the period’s primary trope, the chapter sees in this fiction a persistent, unbridled human vitality against a backdrop of urban decay, disenchantment, and political anachronism, with dirty realist Pedro Juan Gutiérrez and Antonio José Ponte as bookends to the period’s spectrum of thematic and formal possibilities. Other fiction writers examined include, among others, José Miguel Sánchez (Yoss), Leonardo Padura Fuentes, Abilio Estévez, Ena Lucía Portela, Senel Paz, Jesús Díaz, Eliseo Alberto, Wendy Guerra, José Manuel Prieto, Anna Lidia Vega Serova, Adelaida Fernández de Juan, and Antonio Armenteros. Among the major transformations registered in this fiction are increased visibility of racial inequities, greater permissiveness toward homoeroticism, representations of tourism and sex as well as poverty, and a range of attitudes toward the Soviet period.

Keywords

Cuban Special Period fiction Pedro Juan Gutiérrez (1950–)Antonio José Ponte (1964–)Leonardo Padura Fuentes (1955–)Abilio Estévez (1954–)Ena Lucía Portela (1972–)Senel Paz (1950–)Jesús Díaz (1941–2002)José Manuel Prieto (1962–)Anna Lidia Vega Serova (1968–)

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge History of Cuban Literature , pp. 516 - 531

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009168359.034 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2024

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