Lydia Cabrera

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lydia Cabrera (Havana, May 20, 1899 - September 19, 1991) was a Cuban anthropologist and poet.

Cabrera was born in Havana; she took an interest in Afro-Cuban culture after being introduced to the subject by her father, Raimundo Cabrera, and her sister Emma. She couldn't go to school and high-school due to a disease and several teachers educated her at home. She moved to France in 1927, hoping to become an artist, and graduated from L'École du Louvre in 1930. In 1938 she returned to Cuba, where she remained until she left in 1960 as an exile following the Cuban revolution led by by Fidel Castro. She moved to Miami, Florida, where she remained until the rest of her life.

She was an authority on Santería and other Afro-Cuban religions. Over her lifetime she published over one hundred books; little if any of her work is available in English. Her most important book is El Monte, (Spanish: "The Wilderness") which was the first major anthropological study of Afro-Cuban traditions. Upon her death, she donated her research collection to the library of the University of Miami. A section in Gabriel Cabrera Infante's book, Tres Tigres Tristesa, has a section written under Lydia Cabrera's name, in a comical rendition of her literary voice.