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.
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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 also won the Goldenn Wreath of the Struga poetry evenings for 2006. 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.
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 Woman). 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.
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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.
See also: Morejón, Nancy. Looking Within / Mirar adentro: Selected Poems / Poemas escogidos. 1954-2000. Bilingual Edition. Edited and with an introduction by Juanamaría Cordones-Cook. Translations by Gabriel Abudu, David Frye, Nancy Abraham Hall, Mirta Quintanales, Heather Rosario Sievert, and Kathleen Weaver. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003. [African American Life Series.] 367 pp. ISBN 0-8143-3037-1 (hbk); ISBN 0-8143-3038-X (pb).