Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1 ‘A man in an ordinary cloth cap’
- 2 ‘Brown Sons of Africa’
- 3 ‘The honey of a satirical philosophy’
- 4 ‘This is the time for practical politics’
- 5 ‘Maybe he thought it was a disgrace too’
- 6 ‘The clouds pregnant with moisture’
- 7 ‘Well, I'll just start again, won't I’
- 8 ‘You had to be contented with history’
- 9 ‘Y eso, lo tenemos aquí en Cuba!’
- 10 Coming Home
- Bibliography
- Index
10 - Coming Home
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1 ‘A man in an ordinary cloth cap’
- 2 ‘Brown Sons of Africa’
- 3 ‘The honey of a satirical philosophy’
- 4 ‘This is the time for practical politics’
- 5 ‘Maybe he thought it was a disgrace too’
- 6 ‘The clouds pregnant with moisture’
- 7 ‘Well, I'll just start again, won't I’
- 8 ‘You had to be contented with history’
- 9 ‘Y eso, lo tenemos aquí en Cuba!’
- 10 Coming Home
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
As it draws to its end, interpretation is directed towards desire, with which, in a certain sense, it is identical. Desire, in fact, is interpretation itself.
La Guma's journeys from Africa to Europe, and from Europe to the Caribbean, ‘wrote back’ two stages of the triangular trade that had underpinned the slave economies of his last home, but the man whose songs had called on the children of slaves to awake would never reverse the Middle Passage and return to Africa.
For almost a decade, Blanche had been living with the constant fear that her husband would suffer a fatal heart attack. A light sleeper, she would often lie with her hand on his pulse to monitor his condition. A fourth attack killed La Guma in Havana on 11 October 1985. In response to a letter from Wolfie Kodesh, Blanche writes that he ‘did not suffer long, it was all over in ten minutes’. One afternoon, when he began to present all the symptoms of an imminent attack, she drove him to the hospital ‘at top speed, lights on, hooting all the way … I had a clear view of him in the rear-view mirror, sitting in the middle of the back seat, and actually saw him sinking. Just about fifty metres from the hospital he called my name twice. I looked back and saw him stiffen and relax. I think that was when he died’. Notified of the emergency, a doctor and stretcher were waiting for them.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Alex la GumaA Literary and Political Biography, pp. 221 - 231Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2010