El veintidós de abril/April 22nd

Guillermo Cabrera Infante and his wife, Miriam Gomez,
as photographed for The Paris Review, 1983. Click HERE
for interview. 

¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Guillermo Cabrera Infante!  (1929-2005)

A Cuban writer, screenwriter, and film critic who at first adamantly supported the Communist Revolution and Castro regime, Guillermo Cabrera Infante (who used the pseudonym G. Caín in the 1950s) went into exile in 1965 and became an outspoken critic of Castro and communism. Considered a member of the "Latin Boom" (alongside writers such as Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Julio Cortázar, and Carlos Fuentes), Cabrera nonetheless shunned this label. He was decidedly more libertarian than his contemporaries. As he explained in a 1983 Paris Review interview, which he gave when teaching at the University of Virginia as a guest professor, "Any literary work that aspires to the condition of art must forget politics, religion, and, ultimately, morals. Otherwise it will be a pamphlet, a sermon, or a morality play." Cabrera, who after his mother's funeral in Cuba in 1965 left and never returned, was criticized by left-wing writers in 1960s Spain, where he and his wife, Miriam Gomez, first sought to live before settling in London. "People who attack me as anti-Castroist live quite happily in Franco's Spain, whereas I can't live under a left- or rightwing dictator," Cabrera explained (from Cabrera's obituary in The Guardian, click HERE). Best known for his 1967 novel Tres Tristes Tigres (Three Sad Tigers), which has been compared to James Joyce's Ulysses, Cabrera won the Premio Cervantes, Spain's highest literary honor, in 1997. Cabrera's 1979 autobiographical novel Un Infante Difunto (Infante's Inferno) describes pre-revolutionary Havana. Before he died in 2005, Cabrera requested that his ashes be kept for burial in a post-Castro Cuba. He was survived by his wife of nearly half a century, Miriam Gomez, and two daughters, Carola and Ana, from his first marriage. Click HERE to see an interview (in Spanish) with Cabrera about censorship in Cuba.

For resources for teaching Spanish, Level 1 through AP, CLICK HERE.

Photo from wikipedia

Other April 22nd birthdays of note:

Laurel Aitken (1927-2005): A Cuban-born musician of Jamaican and Cuban ancestry who moved to Jamaica in 1938, he is known as the "Godfather of Ska." Listen to his song Quizás, Quizás HERE.

Mariana Levy (1966-2005): Mexican actress, singer, and television host who was the daughter of actress Talina Fernández and banker Gerardo Jorge Levy. She participated in many popular Mexican telenovelas.

Ana María Shua (1951-        ): Argentine writer and recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship for the Creative Arts, she is known for her "microficción." To see her in a 30 second video clip "Soy lo que leo," in which she talks about Jorge Luis Borges, click HERE. Click HERE for her official website (in Spanish).

Queen Isabela (1451-1504): Queen of Spain with Ferdinand (Fernando e Isabela, los Reyes Católicos), Isabela is perhaps the most famous of Spansih royalty, as she and Ferdidand were responsible for the "Reconquista" of Spain from the Moors, the voyage of Cristopher Columbus to the Americas, and the Inquisition.