Cuban Writer to Participate in the Ibero-American Book Fair

Journalist, writer, and editor Norge Céspedes Díaz will participate as a guest on October 3 and 4 in the Ibero-American Book Fair in Ottawa, Canada, where he will present his most recent literary productions.

«One is Rómpete una pierna, anécdotas entre bambalinas and the other is El árbol y la escarcha. Muestra de actores cubano-canadienses, which is the first anthology of Cuban-Canadian literature, whose selection I made together with writer Ana Núñez González, who is the director of the Cristálidas Ediciones house, based in Montreal.»

El árbol y la escarcha emerged during a previous visit by the author, a Manzanillo native residing in Matanzas, to Canada in the autumn of 2023, when he did an artistic residency there.

«There we met; I got to know the publishing house, and from then on, over time, this anthology emerged that gathers a total of ten Cuban writers residing in various territories of Canada.

«There are poetry texts and short stories as well. Many of the anthologized authors have won prizes in various literary contests called in Canada or in other countries, including Cuba.

«The book reflects in a certain way the process they have lived as immigrants, from a different perspective of literature, also a way of reflecting that estrangement before the new land or that nostalgia for Cuba.»

But the book goes beyond capturing the nostalgia of those who say goodbye to their Homeland to address the surprise and expectations of those who made the Canadian land their own.

Furthermore, it results in a greater benefit because it brings Cuban-Canadian authors into dialogue with Cuban writers and readers, as an edition by Ediciones Matanzas is also being prepared at this moment.

«There are many zones reflected in the book. As I was telling you, it is the first anthology of Cuban-Canadian literature. Research had to be done to arrive at it; we located nearly thirty Cuban-Canadian authors.

«We did not manage to contact all of them, but in the end we made this sample that I believe can help understand this process that those who emigrate live and, above all, to see this other perspective that these Cubans who are there bring from Canada and who have a sensibility that is modified with the passage of time.»

Rómpete una pierna, anécdotas entre bambalinas, a text born thanks to the original idea of playwright, writer, and researcher Ulises Rodríguez Febles, will be the other title that Céspedes Díaz will make available to Canadian readers.

Worthy of the Juan Francisco Manzano grant from the UNEAC provincial committee in Matanzas, it gathers half a hundred testimonies of Cuban actors and theater directors, among them several national prize winners and essential figures of the Cuban stage.

«From various groups from almost the entire country, from different theatrical manifestations — from dramatic, humorous, lyrical, street, puppet theater.

«They are day-to-day anecdotes from behind the scenes, accidents in stagings, in rehearsals, forgotten texts, situations that happen in the relationship with the public, among the actors themselves, tours — a broad range of themes of that type that are usually not received by the public because the public only sees the theatrical fact and not what is behind it.

«This is a way of approaching from the inside that world of theater, those seams that exist and are not seen because the theatrical fact itself tries to hide them, but which also constitute a way of understanding the world of theater, its history.»

The book, which will first come out through the Canadian Cristálidas Ediciones and has an edition in preparation by the Alarcos publishing house, is divided into several sections that seek the organization of all the anecdotes. «There are personalities; there are stories that are humorous in nature, others more emotional, others constitute homage, others narrate unusual events.

«Addressing the anecdotes involved a demanding technical task because in them one must include data referring to the stagings, the time period in which they developed, names of groups, directors, and other elements that are necessary, but trying not to let them crush the anecdote itself.»

Likewise, considers the also narrator and essayist, it settles a debt with memory by leaving printed record of recollections, fragments of history, experiences that otherwise could come undone before oblivion.

«It is very important to preserve in black and white each one of those anecdotes because they are stories that, like everything that comes from popular colloquy, could end up in oblivion. Those anecdotes are always told among the actors themselves at the end of a show, among friends on a tour, on the bus, on the plane, but they stay there, in the air.

«That is why we try to rescue them within this book that is part of the Oral Memory project of the Casa de la Memoria Escénica in Matanzas.»

«Rómpete una pierna is a book of homage to Cuban theater and culture; but it is also entertaining, a singular contribution to the identity, memory, and heritage of the Cuban nation, which is diluted in its ephemeral passing, and which sometimes is not made conscious of, giving it the importance and support it needs,» in the words of Rodríguez Febles, director of the Casa de la Memoria Escénica.

El árbol y la escarcha and Rómpete una pierna, anécdotas entre bambalinas are two texts by a Cuban author that Canadian readers will be able to access in the already near month of October, while they become opportunities for exchange between two apparently very different nations that maintain an almost permanent dialogue, now also from literature.

Norge Céspedes Díaz is a narrator, essayist, journalist, and editor. A graduate in Social Communication from the University of Havana, he was a member of the Hermanos Saíz Association and the Onelio Jorge Cardoso Literary Training Workshop. He has published, among others, the essay Lino Novás Calvo. Periodista encontrado, Manos a la obra. Testimonios de artesanos matanceros, Juan Candela y otras narraciones de Zapata, and Todo lo demás es humo. Los escritores hablan.

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Six key words (in English): book, fair, literature, Cuba, Canada, writer, Matanzas,