El diez de julio/July 10th
 |
| Photo from El Porvenir. Click HERE. |
A Cuban poet, journalist, political activist, and writer of African-European descent, Guillén was known during his life as the National Poet of Cuba. Born in Camagüey, he was the oldest of six children born to Nicolás Guillén y Urra, who had fought for Cuban independence from Spain, and Argelia Batista y Arrieta. Guillén's father belonged to the Partido Libertad and founded the daily newspaper La Libertad to express his views. Government forces assassinated Guillén's father for protesting electoral fraud and closed down his printing press. After that, Guillén's family struggled financially. Guillén was greatly influenced by meeting African-American poet Langston Hughes in 1930. Hughes' enthusiasm for Afro-Cuban music inspired Guillén, who was familiar with 'son' music from his father. Hughes immediately recognized the similarities between son music in Cuba and the blues in the United States, which informed his poetry, and after meeting him Guillén began to infuse his art with Afro-Cuban speech, song, and dance. Hughes and Guillén had a life-long friendship based on mutual respect and convictions about racial inequality (read more HERE). Because his poetry was imbued with Marxist ideology and he had declared himself communist, Guillén was denied a visa to the United States in the 40s, and he was exiled from Cuba for five years during the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. After the Revolution in 1959, Fidel Castro welcomed him back to Cuba, where he continued to write and receive accolades, including Cuba's National Prize for Literature in 1983.
For resources for teaching Spanish, Level 1 through AP, CLICK HERE.
Comments
Post a Comment