9781422279762

This Cuban stamp features a portrait of Nicolás Guillén. “Tengo lo que tenia que tener” is the last line of one of his best- known poems, “Tengo.” In English, this is translated as, “I have what I had to have.”

ences. The eight poems in the volume imitated the rhythms of son while focusing on themes related to the island’s poor black, or Afro-Cuban, people. The poems also employed speech pat- terns from that group. Cuba’s blacks were only two generations removed from the experience of slavery, which after more than three and a half centuries had finally been abolished on the island in 1886. Afro-Cubans and their culture were still widely looked down on, however. While Guillén was angered by the racism he saw and experienced, he wasn’t bitter. If Afrocubanismo for him involved honoring and elevating the black Cuban experience, it didn’t mean condemning Cuba’s whites. On the contrary, Guillén celebrated the interconnectedness of all his country’s people, whether they descended from African groups such as

14

Arts and Literature of Cuba