The Chinese in Cuba, 1847-Now (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780739133439)

This book deals with Chinese immigrants' role in the struggle for Cuban liberation and in Cuba's twentieth-century revolutionary social movement; the history of the Chinese economy in Cuba; and the Chinese contribution to Cuban music, painting, food, sport, and language. The centerpiece of the book is a translation of a study by Mauro Garc僘 Triana and Pedro Eng Herrera on the history of the Chinese presence in Cuba. Over many years, Garc僘 and Eng have collaborated closely on scholarly research on the Chinese contribution to Cuban life and politics, although their work is not widely known. Both are well equipped for such an enterprise: Eng as a Cuban of Chinese descent and a participant in the ethnic-Chinese revolutionary movement in Cuba, starting in the 1950s; Garc僘 as a participant in the struggle against Batista and Cuban Ambassador to China during the period of the Cultural Revolution.

The study is supplemented by an extensive collection of archival photographs and of paintings on Cuban-Chinese themes by Pedro Eng, who is not just a chronicler of the community but a well-known worker-artist who paints in a style described by commentators as "naive." The volume has three appendices: excerpts from the Cuba Commission's 1877 report on Chinese emigration to Cuba; the rebel leader Gonzalo de Quesada y Artegui's pamphlet "The Chinese and Cuban Independence," translated from his book Mi primera ofrenda (My first offering), first published in 1892; and the chapter on "Coolie Life in Cuba" from Duvon Clough Corbitt's Study of the Chinese in Cuba, 1847-1947 (Wilmore 1971).

Author: Gregor Benton, Mauro Garc僘 Triana, Pedro Eng Herrera
ISBN-10: 0739133438
ISBN-13: 9780739133439
Publisher: Lexington Books
Language: English
Published: 02/16/2009
Pages: 298
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.35lbs
Size: 9.00h x 5.90w x 1.00d

Review Citation(s):
Chronicle of Higher Education 04/10/2009 pg. 16