"With the exception of the local corner bar, which they could patronize, Black Cubans did not share recreational activities with white Cubans. They were not hired as clerks or even as menial help in the restaurants. There were no Black Cuban entrepreneurs, except for a tailor, a barber and a very successful dry-cleaning establishment," Grillo says in the book. "In the main, Black Cubans and white Cubans lived apart from one another in Ybor City." While slavery may have been different in Cuba, Afro-Cubans wound up with a social status not much different from that of African Americans. Even Blacks who were financially successful had to deny their ethnicity in order to be accepted within Cuba's white society: "In Cuba, affluent Black Cubans moved within the society of the affluent. 'Es Negro, pero es Negro blanco' ['He is a Black man, but he is a white Black man'] was an expression I heard often."
207 p., Explores the expression of Afro-Cuban identity and its illustration by Afro-Cuban writers and filmmakers within the context of the Cuban Revolution. It answers two questions. First, how does Afro-Cuban artistic expression of Afro-Cuban reality change from the 1970s to the 1990s? and second, how can we reread works from Afro-Cuban writers and filmmakers within the context of the Cuban Revolution in light of the ideological disconnects between Revolution, racial discourse, and artistic expression? To answer these questions the author looks to a diverse group of Afro-Cuban artists who produced groundbreaking works during the 1970s and 1990s. Beginning with Nancy Morejón as an example of a well-known literary figure in Afro-Cuban arts, the dissertation delves deeper into the evolution of Afro-Cuban aesthetics with the cinematic works of Nicolas Guillen Landrian in the 1960s, Sara Gómez and Sergio Giral in the 1970s and finally Gloria Rolando in the 1990s. These are all artists whose work has previously never been considered in concert, but together, their works engage in an interesting dialogue and provide a collective answer to the research questions on which this project is based.
