Lydia Cabrera

Ever the trickster, Lydia Cabrera blurred the lines between historian and storyteller, reality and fiction. Finding their initial context—and audience—in the avant-garde milieu of interwar Paris, Cabrera’s stories based on Afro-Cuban myths and folktales continue to inform and inspire generations of artists, writers, and scholars. When the rise of fascism forced Cabrera to return to her native Cuba, she devoted herself to the preservation of Afro- Cuban cultures, a lifework that culminated in her scholarly and spiritual masterpiece, El Monte, in which the Cuban wilderness is brilliantly animated by the voices and rituals of the dead. The first English volume dedicated to her work, Lydia Cabrera: Between the Sum and the Parts introduces her substantial legacy to a new audience.

Lydia Cabrera was born in Havana in
1899 and moved to Paris in 1927
where she studied art at the École du
Louvre and painting with the Russian avant-garde artist Alexandra Exter. First written as a way to entertain her ill lover Teresa de la Parra, her stories based on Afro-Cuban folktales and myths have delighted generations of artists, writers, and scholars. When Cabrera returned to Cuba, she devoted her life to the preservation of Americas Society, 2018