Hola Reader-Friends: Twenty years ago, Ruth Behar (my friend, colleague, mentor, and co-creator of this blog), edited Bridges to Cuba/Puentes a Cuba, a landmark anthology that brought together Cuban voices of the second generation, both on the island and in the...
English
Bridge Report: An Interview with Elier Alvarez of Caminos de Palabras
Alvarez, Executive Director of Caminos de Palabras, a growing organization in Havana dedicated to supporting spoken word poetry in Cuba, graciously agreed to an interview with us by email. Read post in Spanish >> How did Caminos de Palabras get started? Caminos...
Manifesto of a Cuban Heart
It was a conclusion as safe as it was seemingly final: My Cuba is buried in Miami. I decided this on the day a cemetery worker locked the small glass door on the mausoleum niche, placing my father’s ashes next to the urn that holds the ashes of my mother. A muted...
Ruth Behar interviews Richard Blanco: On the experience of presenting Matters of the Sea/Cosas del mar at the Reopening of the U.S. Embassy in Cuba
Dear Friends, For this post, we wanted to share a conversation we had about the reopening of the U.S. Embassy in Cuba. At the ceremony, Richard read a poem that he'd written for the occasion, "Matters of the Sea," which Ruth translated into Spanish as "Cosas del mar."...
The House Between the Sky and the Sea
Dear friends, This month we are delighted to feature Chilean-American poet and writer Marjorie Agosín on our blog. The blog is primarily a platform for Cuban voices, but now and then we want to make room for other voices that speak to issues of immigration, exile,...
Cuban Pictures and Political Love
“What is it then between us?” Walt Whitman, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry Read post in Spanish >> It’s a strange picture, torn at one corner, stained, damaged by time. I have been looking at it for decades. There are two figures—a toddler, dressed in an Asturian...
A Thank You and A Little Chronicle of Our Trip to Cuba
Dear Friends of Bridges to/from Cuba: First of all, we want to thank all of you who contacted us about your enthusiasm for our project. We were moved that several of you wrote to us within moments after we launched our site on June 8th. It was thrilling to hear that...
Island to Island
In the spirit of all we hope this blog means and represents, we have bridged together two of our poems into one. A symbolic gesture of the bridge of our friendship, the bridge of our writing into the Cuba of the past, the bridge of our imagination stretching into the...
Recent Comments