Introduction

Summary

This work focuses on six novels: Reinaldo Arenas's El color del verano, Leonardo Padura Fuentes' Máscaras, Abilio Estévez's Tuyo es el reino, Daína Chaviano's Casa de juegos, Yanitzia Canetti's Al otro lado and Zoé Valdés' La nada cotidiana. The selected novels were published during the 1990s, and in my view their authors, regardless of their place of residence, are products of the educational system of the Cuban revolution, since even those who left the island to go and live abroad did so as adults. The six novels that occupy my attention in this study share a common territorialization: their spatial constant is the island of Cuba and Cuban imagery, used as starting points. Yet the recreation of the island through the different narratives comes from different locations: Havana itself, in the case of Padura, Barcelona (Estévez), Paris (Valdés), Boston (Canetti), Miami (Chaviano) and New York (Arenas).

Yvette Sánchez has argued that the narrative written in exile attempts to create bridges that rely on nostalgia and frozen memories. In her words:

Sin contacto directo con la vida cotidiana de aquella Isla, se sigue manteniendo y nutriendo una relación mediante la memoria, y la información actualizada de experiencias ajenas. En el destierro, se engendran recuerdos, sueños, fantasmas y proyecciones teñidos por la añoranza, que congelan una imagen propia del pasado, combinada con las impresiones de segunda mano, enviadas a través de diferentes canales, por los que se han quedado allá. La narrativa escrita en el exilio parece mostrar especial interés por recuperar el pulso diario de la tierra perdida, por luchar contra el desarraigo, y compensarlo, al menos en la dimensión ficticia. (2000: 163)