Abstract
This paper examines representations of meat in Cuban literature and culture in the first half of the twentieth century. While sugar has been an extremely productive lens through which to understand Cuban history and culture, I propose meat as an alternative agricultural commodity with its own rich story to tell about Cuban politics, imperial entanglements, and modernity. Focusing my attention on the literary production of Virgilio Piñera, I trace his engagement with the powerful resonances of carne as meat / flesh in the Latin American literary tradition, showing the ways this trope became a generative site for addressing material scarcity and hunger, but also an aesthetics that could capture the island’s colonial condition and the violence of dictatorship.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Hunger, Meat, Literature, Cuba, Politics
