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Wendy Guerra

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Wendy Guerra
Born (1970-12-11) 11 December 1970 (age 53)
Havana, Cuba
OccupationWriter
LanguageSpanish
NationalityCuban
GenresPoetry, novel

Wendy Guerra (born 11 December 1970), formally Wendy Guerra Torres Gomez de Cadiz, is a Cuban poet and novelist. After a career acting in Cuban film and television, she turned to writing and won recognition more readily in international circles than within Cuba. Her works have been translated into thirteen languages.[1] She has been described as "a kind of diva of contemporary Cuban literature".[2]

Biography

Guerra was born on 11 December 1970 in Havana in what she later described as "a small provincial hospital". Her family soon moved to Cienfuegos on Cuba's southern coast.[3] Her mother Albis Torres was an unpublished poet,[4] whom Guerra calls "the unknown poet".[3]

Guerra's first collection of poems, Platea a oscuras, won her a prize from the University of Havana when she was barely 17.[3] She then earned a degree in film, radio and television direction at Havana's Instituto Superior de Arte.[2] During a writing workshop, Gabriel Garcia Marquez read a section of her diary and praised her ability to write dialog.[3] She appeared on Cuba's first morning television show, Buenos Días, where she read children's stories.[1] She worked as an actress on Cuban television and in film, but considers her abilities limited, though she found the experience useful as a student of character and interpretation.[5] Her film credits include Hello Hemingway (1990).[6]

She kept diaries that formed the basis for her first novel, Todos Se Van (Everyone Leaves), which was published in Spain in 2006. The novel follows its young protagonist through childhood and adolescence in Cuba. Reviewing the U.S. edition in 2012 for NPR, Alan Cheuse noted "she describes with a freshness and intensity I haven't read before".[7]

She traveled to Barcelona in 2006 to receive the first Editorial Bruguera prize.[8] Upon returning to Cuba, she was ostracized in professional circles[9] and was removed as the host of her television program.[10] Photocopies of the novel circulated in Cuba and Guerra reported that she was even asked to autograph them. She later said: "The authorities have a problem with my novel, not with me. I do not cause I'm not going to change the world. I write just reality, a testimony of what one can not do, I'm sorry, but it's like that. I am writing so that we can understand Cuba." She added: "Cuba is a pressure cooker whose only valves are artists".[11]

The novel was adapted into the screenplay for a film directed by the Colombian Sergio Cabrera.[12] Cabrera shot the film in Cuba without permission and, though the novel had not been published in Cuba, screened the film at the Havana Film Festival.[13] Guerra described seeing the film:[5]

I knew this was not my own story. It's a fictional story that left my hands and belongs entirely to those people who, like me, suffered the State as an executioner-intrusion installed in the center of the most sacred relationship: the family. The novel talks of the desertions of the soul, not only does it touch on the heartbreaking geographical exodus, we are talking about the flight of family and close friends in the name of a slogan or political responsibility.

She once joked that her ambition was to write a Cuban version of Bonjour tristesse.[11] She received the Carbet des Lycéens prize (Prix Carbet des lycéens) in 2009.[14]

In 2010, France named her a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.[15]

Long fascinated with the life and works of Anaïs Nin (1903–1977), an English-language writer who was born and raised in Havana, Guerra conducted research in Havana and Paris and read Nin's unexpurgated diaries at UCLA before publishing a diary in Nin's voice, Posar desnuda en la Habana (Posing Nude in Havana) (2012). She explained that "her Cuban Diary has very few pages and my delirium was always to write an apocryphal novel; literary conjecture about what might have happened".[5] Extracts from Nin's diaries are interwoven with fictional entries so that, in the words of one critic, "It places the concrete historical character–a woman character and also a writer–in coexistence with much of the young intelligentsia of the early decades of the Cuban 20th century and, in that context, expresses many aspects of her own female psyche. It's not Anaïs who speaks; it's Wendy, cross-dressed as Nin."[2] In this and other works based on diaries and historical research, she begins with the female writer's traditional diary form and then "uses diaries and collected letters to shatter their golden rule, the author-narrator identification, and takes advantage of the autobiographical form to create a fictitious character, on the supposed skin of a historical character ... immersed in a real historical event...."[2]

In 2013, describing the experience of being read in Cuba even while her books were banned there she said that "the state is master of everything and there are no options, they have decided to play us out, I do not exist for them. I belong to a dynasty of silenced authors and when I go to my island, after having been translated into many languages, I feel a powerful silence about me. I'm not alone, I am part of a hard silence." She always returns to Cuba from her travels abroad because "A writer without a country is a fatherless child. I'm an orphan."[3] She writes a blog from Havana that is hosted by the Spanish newspaper El Mundo.[3]

In 2014, she and another Cuban writer, William Navarrete [es], were prevented from speaking at a literary festival in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, by the government of Bolivian President Evo Morales which anticipated they would criticize Bolivia's suppression of free speech.[16]

In 2013, when none of her novels had been published in Cuba and copies remained banned, she published Negrain Spain, a first person narrative of racial discrimination in post-Revolutionary Cuban society, a reality denied by the government.[17]

In 2015 she described her next project, "a novel about fear. The feeling of persecution many of us Cubans have, the panic that they are recording our conversations, of being watched, searched, harassed. This psychosis travels with us." Her working title is La espía del Arte (The Art Spy).[5] Her longer-term project involves researching the life of the Cuban artist Ana Mendieta (1948–1985).[5]

In 2016 Guerra published Domingo de Revolución (Revolution Sunday) in Spain, the story of a Cuban author who publishes a book of poems in Europe and is the object of suspicion by both the Cuban government and Cuban dissidents. She said it could have been set in several recent decades, but she chose the 21st century in which people have inherited and learned to live with the "infiltration" of the state into private life.[18]

Though her writing is not explicitly political, it nevertheless includes implicit critiques of government policy. In Todos se van, explains one scholar, describes "a landscape of oppression and, what is worse, its internalization and perpetual reenactment in private relations".[19] The principal character, Nieve, could emigrate except that her father will not give permission for fear of offending Communist Party officials, and once he leaves in the Mariel boatlift he can no longer grant permission.[20] And Ninca fui primera dama casts the influence of the Soviet Union on Cuban society in a negative as in this a vision of radio station in Cuba that embodies old technologies and a cultural style inherited from the Soviets: "A place frozen in time, with all the cold of the Siberian Steppe, the air condition[er] on high, and Russian postcards arranged in size on top of the frozen, noisy, and also Soviet apparatus, battered, but there working. I doubt that the Russian functionaries still have such a place in their country."[21] In her blog hosted by El Mundo, she wrote of the thaw in Cuban–American relations announced in December 2014:[22]

Many thought that the wall of water would fall in one night. Some speculated that we would wake up with the news of a death or an overthrow and then everything would change. Living in this country teaches you that that is not possible, no matter what your political ideal. Things on this island are much more complex, foreign formulas do not work for us. Political life has taken root in a heartbreaking eternity, a deep, infinite eternity that has beaten my grandparents, my parents and that can powerfully beat me and mine.

While welcoming the hope offered by Barack Obama's words, she asked: "Has anyone thought about how lonely, how profoundly alone we Cubans have been in the midst of the crowd?" Yet she contrasted that isolation with another Cuban identity: "In contrast with our anti-imperialist spirit, cultivated for five decades and more, we must be clear that half of our affections live in America and that everything that happens to us goes through the same waters and the same winds. Our weather forecast is almost nearly Miami's." She concluded by evoking Hemingway:[22]

Here is the enemy at last ... going to talk, to walk with them, to make peace, to rebuild our lives and change everything for the better should be changed without ceasing to be what we are ... here is the enemy at last ... Hello, welcome and farewell to arms ...

Guerra's writing has appeared in such magazines as Encuentro, La gaceta de Cuba, and Nexos, as well as in magazines devoted to the visual arts.

Guerra has been a guest lecturer at Princeton University[23] and Dartmouth College.[24]

She is married to jazz pianist Ernán López-Nussa.[4]

Poetry

  • Platea a oscuras (1987)
  • Cabeza rapada (1996)
  • Ropa interior (Bruguera, 2009)
    • A Cage Within (Harbor Mountain Press, 2013); translated by Elizabeth Polli

Novels

  • Todos se van (Everyone's Leaving) (Barcelona: Bruguera, 2006)
    • Everyone Leaves (2013); translated by Achy Obejas
  • Nunca fui primera dama (I was never the grand dame) (Barcelona: Bruguera, 2008)
  • Posar desnuda en La Habana (Posing Nude in Havana); Alfaguara (2012), Letras Cubanas (2013)
  • Negra (Editorial Anagrama, 2014)
  • Domingo de Revolucion (Anagrama, 2016)

References

  1. ^ a b Atkins, Margaret (January 2015). "Wendy Guerra, Havana's literary darling". La Habana. Retrieved 31 May 2016.
  2. ^ a b c d Vázquez, Yailuma (1 July 2014). "Wendy Guerra: Postmodern Updating of the Diary as a Genre". Cuba Now. Retrieved 31 May 2016.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Méndez Alpízar, L. Santiago (27 September 2013). "Guerra al silencio". El Pais (in Spanish). Retrieved 31 May 2016.
  4. ^ a b "Literature, Wendy Guerra, Writer". Havana Cultura. Retrieved 30 May 2016.
  5. ^ a b c d e Sanchez, Yoani (9 February 2015). "Cuban Author Wendy Guerra: 'I'm a Demon Who Writes What She Feels'". HuffPost Latino Voices. Retrieved 30 May 2016.
  6. ^ Garcia, Juan Antonio (2001). Guía crítica del cine cubano de ficción (in Spanish). Arte Y Literatura. p. 166.
  7. ^ Cheuse, Alan (4 December 2012). "Book Review: 'Everyone Leaves'". All Things Considered. NPR. Retrieved 30 May 2016.
  8. ^ "Wendy Guerra retrata el día a día en Cuba en 'Todos se van', ganadora del premio Bruguera". El País (in Spanish). 6 April 2006. Retrieved 30 May 2016.
  9. ^ Corral, Will H.; De Castro, Juan E.; Birns, Nicholas, eds. (2013). "Chapter 3: Hispanophone Caribbean". The Contemporary Spanish-American Novel: Bolano and After. New York: Bloomsbury. ISBN 9781441123947. Retrieved 31 May 2016.
  10. ^ "Jeg eksisterer ikke i mitt eget hjemland" (in Norwegian). Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. 29 May 2011. Retrieved 30 May 2016.
  11. ^ a b Caussé, Bruno (3 July 2008). "Wendy Guerra : une Cubaine libre". Le Monde (in French). Retrieved 31 May 2016.
  12. ^ "El colombiano Sergio Cabrera rueda el filme 'Todos se van', basado en la novela de Wendy Guerra". Diario de Cuba (in Spanish). 16 October 2013. Retrieved 30 May 2016.
  13. ^ "Colombian Filmmaker Takes Cuban Novel to the Big Screen". Havana Times. 27 March 2015. Retrieved 31 May 2016.
  14. ^ "Le prix Carbet des lycéens pour Wendy Guerra". France-Guyane (in French). 20 January 2009. Retrieved 30 May 2016.
  15. ^ "Wendy GUERRA reçoit les insignes de Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres". French Embassy in Cuba (in French). Retrieved 30 May 2016.
  16. ^ "Escritores cubanos censurados por Evo Morales en festival literario". El Nuevo Herald (in Spanish). 13 November 2014. Retrieved 30 May 2016.
  17. ^ Clermont, Thierry (13 November 2014). "Negra de Wendy Guerra : colonnes d'ébène". Le Figaro (in French). Retrieved 31 May 2016.
  18. ^ Yuste Tosi, Javier (18 April 2016). "Wendy Guerra: 'La apertura de Cuba es un buen entrenamiento para una transición'". El Mundo. Retrieved 31 May 2016.
  19. ^ De Ferrari, Guillermina (2014). Community and Culture in Post-Soviet Cuba. New York: Routledge. p. 102. ISBN 9781317813446. Retrieved 31 May 2016.
  20. ^ De Ferrari, Guillermina (2014). Community and Culture in Post-Soviet Cuba. New York: Routledge. p. 109. ISBN 9781317813446. Retrieved 31 May 2016.
  21. ^ Loss, Jacqueline (2012). "Chapter 12: Persistent Matrioshkas". In Loss, Jacqueline; Prieto, José Manuel (eds.). Caviar with Rum: Cuba-USSR and the Post-Soviet Experience. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 189. ISBN 9781137027986. Retrieved 31 May 2016.
  22. ^ a b Guerra, Wendy (18 December 2014). "Habáname: Al fin el enemigo". El Mundo (in Spanish). Retrieved 31 May 2016.
  23. ^ "Visiting Faculty, 2015-2016". Princeton University Program in Latin American Studies. Retrieved 30 May 2016.
  24. ^ "Lecture by Cuban Poet/Novelist Wendy Guerra". Dartmouth College Department of Spanish and Portuguese. 16 October 2013. Retrieved 30 May 2016.
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