Artists’ books from Cuba

The Latin American and Iberian Collections team has recently acquired a small but utterly compelling collection of books published by Ediciones Vigía. These are beautiful and hugely imaginative hand-made artist books created in Matanzas, Cuba. Although in nature very different to the Cartonera collection we have built over the years, Vigía books also help us ask questions about the possibilities of creating and disseminating art and literature in a context of material scarcity.  

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  A purse…

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  …and a book. Las memorias vacías de Solange Bañuelos, by Maité Hernández-Lorenzo (2014).

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  Available at CCB.75.20. Full description here: https://idiscover.lib.cam.ac.uk/permalink/f/t9gok8/44CAM_ALMA21581461540003606

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  The back of the purse-book, with the oil-lamp, the publisher’s symbol, as a zip.

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  Canto a Matanzas, by Carilda Oliver Labra (2014).

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  The back cover of the portfolio.

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  The publication celebrates the 60th anniversary of the poem the prestigious Cuban poet wrote in honour of her hometown, Matanzas.

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  The opening of the portfolio…

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  … and the unfolding.

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  More details here: https://idiscover.lib.cam.ac.uk/permalink/f/t9gok8/44CAM_ALMA21581461650003606

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  Lydia Cabrera en su laguna sagrada, by Natalia Bolívar Arostegui (2015). A rich collage made of bark chippings, cloth, cardboard, jute cord and hand-coloured paper cut-outs.

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  Title page. Book available at CCA.75.4. Lydia Cabrera was a renowned author and anthropologist specialised in Afro-Cuban religions.

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  More info here: https://idiscover.lib.cam.ac.uk/permalink/f/t9gok8/44CAM_ALMA21581461310003606

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  Cristóbal Colón y otros locos, by Pedro R. Monge Rafuls (2016).

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  The work is a play that explores the theme of discovery, conquest, and the “encounter of two worlds”.

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  Available at CCA.75.3. More details here: https://idiscover.lib.cam.ac.uk/permalink/f/t9gok8/44CAM_ALMA21581461380003606

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  La flor del cactus, written, illustrated and desgined by Frank David Valdés (2015). Available at CCC.75.211. See https://idiscover.lib.cam.ac.uk/permalink/f/t9gok8/44CAM_ALMA21581461440003606

Ediciones Vigía was founded by the poet Alfredo Zaldívar and the artist Rolando Estévez in 1985 but did not originally start as a publisher: it began as a cultural association organizing events for the local community to learn about Cuban and international authors. They would produce invitations for such events held in the then named Casa del Escritor (The Author’s House) in the Plaza de la Vigía square in Matanzas.  

Dating Spanish chapbooks: preliminary findings of a Digital Humanities project

The one-year project Spanish chapbooks 1700-1900 in CUDL: dating ephemeral literature, made possible by a Cambridge Humanities Research Grant (CHRG) with the support of Cambridge Digital Humanities, has come to an end (see our earlier blog post on the project here).

Javier Marías: a literary icon

The recent death of writer, translator and columnist Javier Marías (1951-2022) has deeply saddened the literary world. His unique style of writing, his wittiness and his exquisite command of language (in Spanish and in English) won him numerous accolades and many followers both in Spain and abroad. His death on 11 September at the age of 70 came far too early for a writer in his prime who many believed was an obvious candidate for the Nobel prize in Literature. 

Javier Marías (El hombre que no parecía querer nada, 744:39.c.95.435)

Javier Marías graduated in Philosophy and Literature from the Complutense University of Madrid. He taught Spanish literature and translation theory at the University of Oxford between 1983 and 1985, at Wellesley College in Massachusetts in 1984, and at the Complutense University of Madrid between 1986 and 1990. 

He made his debut as a writer at the age of nineteen with his novel Los dominios del lobo and had an extensive and prolific career. Translation shaped and influenced his work. Throughout his career, he expertly translated Joseph Conrad, Thomas Hardy, Thomas Browne, Vladimir Nabokov and Lawrence Sterne, amongst other writers (he won the Fray Luis de León national translation award for his translation of Sterne’s Tristram Shandy in 1979). 

His works have been translated into more than forty languages and published in over fifty countries.  He wrote sixteen novels, eight essays and six short stories, as well as his regular weekly column for the Spanish newspaper El País. In 2006, he was elected to the Real Academia de la Lengua Española (Royal Spanish Academy), the institution responsible for preserving the unity and effective use of the Spanish language in the Spanish speaking world. And, in 2021, he became a member of Britain’s Royal Society of Literature as an International Writer, the first Spanish writer to obtain this distinction. 

Tu rostro mañana 1

Tu rostro mañana 2

Tu rostro mañana 3

The University Library has good coverage of his works in Spanish as well as in English translation. His best-known works appear below, listed in order of appearance more or less: 

• Los dominios del lobo (9002.d.2638, available here) 
• Travesía del horizonte (9001.d.2771, available here) 
• El monarca del tiempo (744:39.c.200.371, available here) 
• El Siglo (744:39.c.200.317, available here) 
• El hombre sentimental (9001.d.2772, available here) 
• Todas las almas (9000.d.3879, available here) 
• Corazón tan blanco (9006.c.393, available here) 
• Mañana en la batalla piensa en mí (Library Storage Facility, available here)  
• Negra espalda del tiempo (C206.d.6260, available here) 
• Tu rostro mañana 1. Fiebre y lanza (744:39.c.200.301, available here)  
• Tu rostro mañana 2. Baile y sueño (744:39.c.200.302, available here) 
• Tu rostro mañana 3. Veneno y sombra y adiós (744:39.c.200.303, available here) 
• Los enamoramientos (C205.c.8016, available here) 
• Así empieza lo malo (C209.c.6900, available here) 
• Berta Isla (C214.c.5164, available here)  
• Tomás Nevinson (C217.c.353, available here) 

The Library also has electronic access to his works Lección pasada de moda: letras de lengua (Digitalia Hispánica, available here) and Donde todo ha sucedido: al salir del cine (Digitalia Hispánica, available here). You can see a list of English translations of his works clicking here. 

Sonia Morcillo

The visitors’ album of María Luisa Aub : a hidden treasure

The visitors’ album of María Luisa Aub came to the University Library in 2018. María Luisa (1927-2013), affectionally called “Mimín” by family and friends, was the eldest daughter of Mexican-Spanish writer Max Aub. She had close links to Cambridge, having lived in the city for over 25 years, but she also lived in exile in Mexico for many years. 

Francia Márquez, the first Afro-Colombian vice-president

On 19th June 2022, after a second round of voting, the Colombian people elected their first ever left-wing government, led by Gustavo Petro, with Francia Márquez as vice-president, the first ever Afro-Colombian and only the second woman to hold the position. In this post, we will focus on this trailblazing woman, who studied Law specifically to be prepared to defend the rights of her people, and on the context that led her and her country to this new chapter in their history.

Francia Elena Márquez Mina was born in 1981 in Yolombó, in the Cauca Department on the West coast of Colombia, one of the areas of the country where enslaved populations from Africa have lived since the 17th century. Traditionally in this region, Black slaves were forced to work in gold mining, sugarcane plantations and cattle ranches. To this day, the impact of exploitatative and extractivist practices on peoples, territories and resources in the region are still painfully relevant and have been part of Francia Márquez’s life experience since her earliest formative years, which would lead her to become a committed activist from the age of 17 years old. This life experience remains the basis of her politics, as she makes the move from activism to mainstream politics.