Puertas a la Imaginacion, an essential read

Ediciones El Cambio just released its latest book, Puertas a la Imaginacion: Nueva Literatura Cubana (Doors to the imagination: New Cuban Literature). It is a publication that reflected the perceptions and concerns of dissidents and ordinary citizens in Cuba, and brings to light the island’s reality.

Puertas a la Imaginacion compiles the work dozens of writers living in Cuba and photographs of pieces by Cuban artists, creating a volume of works worth collecting. The book’s 400 pages are divided into six sections, corresponding to diverse literary genre ranging from essays, to poetry, to short stories and novels and include a preface by Carlos Alberto Montaner, artwork by Armando Valladares on the cover, and an introduction by Gisela Delgado Sablon.

It is worth mentioning that the book is the result of a contest done in Cuba and sponsored by the Independent Libraries of Cuba. The publication includes the work of Lucar Garve, Manuel Cuesta Morua, Julio Aleaga Pesant, Raúl Martínez Bolívar, Guillermo Fariñas, Nereida Pérez, Miguel Iturria, Luis Felipe Rojas, Ricardo González Alfonso, Michel Enríquez Perea, Juan González Febles, Luis Cino and Yasser Iturria, among others.

In the preface, Montaner emphasizes the importance of the imagination: “I do not remember any other work that would group notable non-fiction texts, testimonials, stories, poems and letters in order to confirm the existence in Cuba of this other literature deliberately retracted by the regime (…) The hypocrisy ends up hurting. People simply need to be consistent. The authors have in this anthology are. They will remain in the memory of Cuban literature. “