Hybrid Texts: Family, State and Empire in a Poem by Black Cuban Poet Excilia Saldaña¹

Abstract

Cuba secured political independence from the Spanish metropolis in 1898 but was subsequently forced into a position of economic dependency, first by the United States and, later, the USSR. Not surprisingly, nationalism has been the main ideological imperative in Cuba throughout the twentieth century. After the Revolution of 1959 attempts were made to assimilate hitherto marginal sectors of society (primarily women and blacks) into the new socialist national project. A homogenous Cuban national identity was thus given priority over differences of class, race and gender in cultural and literary expression.