Nancy Morejón

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Nancy Morejón (Havana, 1944- ) is one of Cuba's major authors and poets. She has gained recognition for work whose themes are centered on women and the Afro-Cuban experience.

Nancy Morejón

[edit] Life History

Born in Havana to working-class parents, Morejon excelled in school, beginning to write poems at age 13 and earning English-teaching credentials by age 15. She has written that her father's African heritage and her mother's Chinese and European ancestry gave her an early appreciation of blended dual identity and transculturation, though her prime identity is as an Afro-Caribbean woman. Her first book of poetry, Mutismos, was published when she was 18. She went on to graduate with honors at the University of Havana, having studied European, Caribbean and Cuban Literature and fluent in French, English, and Spanish. She later taught French at an elite Cuban academy and held posts in Cuba's Ministry of the Interior. She is a well-regarded translator of French and English into Spanish, particularly Caribbean literature as well as works by such authors as Alice Walker, and she has been an editor for the Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba. Intellectually prolific, she has produced a number of journalistic, critical, and dramatic works. Some of the most notable have been book-length treatments of another famous Afro-Cuban poet, Nicolas Guillen, which confirmed her as his literary heir. In 1986 she won the Cuban "Premio de la crítica" (Critic's Prize) for Piedra Pulida, and in 2001 won Cuba's National Prize for Literature, a first for a black woman. She has toured extensively in the United States, and her work has been translated into numerous languages. She continues to work, based in her native country of Cuba.

[edit] Themes of Work

The themes of her work span a wide scope. She discusses the mythology of the Cuban nation, and the relation of the blacks of Cuba within that nation. In this she often expresses an integrationist, unifying stance, in which Spanish and African cultures fuse to make a new, Cuban identity. Much of her work--and the fact that she has been successful within the Cuban regime--locates her as a supporter of Cuban nationalism and the Cuban Revolution. In addition, she also voices the situation of women in her within her society, expressing the feminism (as well as the racial integration) of the Cuban revolution by making black women central protagonists in her poems, most notably in the widely anthologized Mujer Negra (Black Women). Finally, her work also treats the history of slavery and mistreatment in the relationship of Cuba and the United States, with a view towards arousing outrage toward abuse.

However, although her work pays attention to political themes, is not exclusively dominated by them. Critics have noted her playful observations about her own people, her effective use of particularly Cuban forms of humor, and her regular "indulgence" in highly lyrical, intimate, spiritual, or even erotic poetry.

[edit] Selected List of Morejon's Works

• Amor, ciudad atribuída, poemas. Habana: Ediciones El Puente, 1964
• Elogio de la danza. Mexico City: La Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1982
• Elogio y paisaje. Habana: Ediciones Unión, 1996
• Fundación de la imagen. Habana: Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1988
• Grenada Notebook/Cuaderno de Granada. Trans. Lisa Davis. New York: Círuculo de Cultura Cubana, 1984
• Mutismos. Habana: Ediciones El Puente, 1962
• Nación y mestizaje en Nicolás Guillén. Habana: Ediciones Unión, 1982
• Octubre imprescindible. Habana: Ediciones Unión, 1982
• Paisaje célebre. Caracas: Fundarte, Alcaldía de Caracas, 1993
• Parajes de una época. Habana: Editorial Letras Caubanas, 1979
• Piedra pulida. Habana: Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1986
• Poemas. Mexico City: Universidad Autónoma de México, 1980
• Poetas del mundo latino en Tlaxcala. Tlaxcala: Universidad Autónoma de Tlaxcala,1988
• Recopilación de textos sobre Nicolás Guillén, ed. Habana Casa de las Américas, 1974
• Richard trajo su flauta y otros argumentos. Habana: Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba, 1967
• Where the Island Sleeps Like a Wing. Trans. Kathleen Weaver. San Francisco: The Black Scholar Press, 1985
• Mirar Adentro/Looking Within: Selected Poems, 1954-2000 (bilingual edition, African American Life Series). Ed. Juanamaria Cordones-Cook. Wayne State University Press, 2002
• With Eyes and Soul: Images of Cuba. Trans. Pamela Carmell and David Frye. White Pine Press, 2004

Monographs:

• "A un muchacho," "Niña que lee en Estelí," "Soldado y yo." Toulouse: Caravelle, 1982
• Baladas para un sueño. Habana: Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba, 1989
• Le Chaînon Poétique. Trans. Sandra Monet-Descombey. Champigny-sur-Marne, France: Edition L. C. J., 1994
• Cuaderno de Granada. Habana: Casa de las Américas, 1984
• Dos poemas de Nancy Morejón. Drawings and design by Rolando Estévez. Matanzas, Cuba: Ediciones Vigía, 1989
• Lengua de pájaro. With Carmen Gonce. Habana: Instituto Cubano del Libro, 1971
• Poemas de amor y de muerte. Toulouse: Caravelle, 1993
• Ours the Earth. Trans. J.R. Pereira. Mona, Jamaica: Institute of Caribbean Studies, 1990
• El río de Martín Pérez y otros poemas. Drawings and design by Rolando Estévez. Matanzas, Cuba: Ediciones Vigía, 1996

[edit] References

This article is substantially based on "Morejón, Nancy", an article written Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez for the Latin American Woman Authors Encyclopedia hosted by Hope College. It was accessed on March 14, 2006 at this address.