Cuba Unites Us
Cuba unites us on soil so foreign,
For Cuban daybreak our love longs:
Cuba is your heart, Cuba is my sky,
In your book, my word, is what Cuba is.
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100 Refutations | Cuba | Poetry | Spanish
May, 2018Cuba unites us on soil so foreign,
For Cuban daybreak our love longs:
Cuba is your heart, Cuba is my sky,
In your book, my word, is what Cuba is.
*
José Martí (1853-1895) is a Cuban national hero and a towering figure in Latin American letters. A poet, essayist, journalist, revolutionary philosopher, translator, professor, publisher, and political theorist, he fought for Cuba's independence from Spain and against the threat of United States expansionism into Cuba. He is considered the father of Latin American modernism, and his best known works include the children's magazine Edad de oro (1889), the poetry collection Versos sencillos (1891), selections from which were adapted by composer Julián Orbón into the iconic Cuban song "Guantanamera," and the many crónicas he wrote for newspapers in the U.S. and Latin America.
Lina M. Ferreira C.-V. earned MFAs in creative nonfiction writing and literary translation from The University of Iowa. She is the author of Drown Sever Sing from Anomalous Press and Don’t Come Back from Mad River Books, as well as editor, with Sarah Viren, of the forthcoming anthology Essaying the Americas. Her fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and translation work has been featured in journals including Bellingham Review, Chicago Review, Fourth Genre, Brevity, Poets & Writers, and The Sunday Rumpus, among others. She won Best of the Net and Iron Horse Review’s Discovered Voices Award, has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes, and is a Rona Jaffe fellow. She moved from Colombia to China to Columbus, Ohio to Richmond, Virginia, where she works as an assistant professor for Virginia Commonwealth University. Visit www.linawritesessays.com.
English translation copyright (c) Lina M. Ferreira C.-V., 2018.