INFO: new book—The Maids of Havana by Pedro Perez-Sarduy

Pedro Pérez-Sarduy
poet, author, journalist

Pedro Pérez-Sarduy  is a poet, writer, journalist and broadcaster living in London. He is the author of Surrealidad (Havana 1967), Cumbite and Other Poems (Havana 1987 and New York 1990), and a new novel, Las Criadas de La Habana (2003), The Maids of Havana.

Set in Cuba and Miami, from the 1940s to the present, two Afro-Cuban women narrate their life stories. One leaves a small town in the central part of the island to work as a maid in Havana in prerevolutionary Cuba. The other, her friend's daughter, educated in revolutionary Cuba, leaves Havana in the 1980 Mariel boatlift, to find work as a maid in Miami… A history full circle?

The English version of The Maids of Havana has gone live online, selling for £9.99 at

http://www.authorhouse.co. uk/Bookstore/ItemDetail.as px?bookid=66117

 

Pedro Pérez-Sarduy is also co-editor with Jean Stubbs of Afro-Cuba: An Anthology of Cuban Writing on Race, Politics and Culture (1993) and co-author of the Introduction for the anthology No Longer Invisible/Afro-Latin Americans Today (1995). 

His Journal in Babylon is a series of chronicles on Britain. His first novel, Las Criadas de la Habana (The Maids of Havana), is based on his mother's life stories about pre-and post-revolutionary Havana.  This is the first novel by a contemporary AfroCuban writer on family life in Cuba. He has written numerous articles, some of which we present on this site.

Together with Jean Stubbs, he wrote Afro-Cuban Voices on Race and Identity in Contemporary Cuba, a book based on interviews with Afro-Cubans (living in the Island), which has been published by the University Press of Florida. This book is important because it is the first treatment of racial issues in contemporary Cuba that gives AfroCubans a voice. 

He has been the recipient of a number of awards, including:

Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship Resident in Humanities, Caribbean 2000 Program. College of Humanites, Universidad of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras,   August-December 1997

Rockefeller Scholar in Afro-American Identity and Cultural Diversity,  Center for African Studies and Center for Latin American Studies,  University of Florida, Gainesville, August-December 1993.

Visiting Fellow, CUNY- Caribbean Exchange Program, Hunter College,  City University of New York, March-June 1990.

Writer-in-residence, Center for American Culture Studies, Columbia University, New York, October-December 1989.
Foto ©  2008 Pedro Pérez-Sarduy

In 1999, he did a tour of the US in April and presented at TransAfrica Forum in Washington, DC and at "Race and the 21st Century at Michigan State University" in Lansing.

He has been a radio journalist since 1965, beginning with Cuban national radio as a current affairs journalist and with Cuban television on the first African and Caribbean music show. He was then with the BBC Latin American Service from 1981 to 1994.

Pedro Pérez-Sarduy and Jean Stubbs also co-edited "No Longer Invisible: Afro-Latin Americans Today," covering Central and South America, with each chapter written by a country specialist.

His latest book of poetry Malecón Sigloveinte (2005), was published in Cuba.

 

 

 

Pedro's CV gives more details. Here's what we have of Pedro's writings on AfroCubaWeb:

 
  • In Living Memory - Pedro remembers his great- grandmother Sabue born in Africa, 3/00
Interviews  

« La crise a accentué le racisme à Cuba », Entretien avec Pedro Pérez Sarduy  Africultures, 4/99, in French,  requires registration.

Social change in Cuba is complex as black and white, Interview in the Seattle Times, 11/24/02

Interview in Jiribilla, 6/02

  
Published Writings  

Afro-Cuba: An Anthology of  Cuban Writing on Race, Politics and Culture

No Longer Invisible/Afro-Latin Americans Today

The Maids of Havana

Afro-Cuban Voices on Race and Identity in Contemporary Cuba
 

[Photo of Pedro Pérez-Sarduy]

Foto ©  2004 Maria Fernandez Vallecas

 

 

 

via afrocubaweb.com