El Monte's New Itineraries

Alberto Sosa-Cabanas is an assistant professor in the Department of English and Modern Languages at Hampton University. His academic work on the intersections between racism and cultural production has received numerous awards and recognitions, including fellowship support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice (ISGRJ), the Tinker Foundation, and the Cuban Research Institute (FIU). His essays can be found in the journals Revista Iberoamericana, Cuban Studies, and Decimononica. He is the editor of the volume Reading Cuba, Discurso Literario y Geografia Transcultural (Valencia, Aduana Vieja, 2018).

Introduction: El Monte, There and Back Again Alberto Sosa-Cabanas PART I: Ethnography, Literary Voices and Construction of the Caribbean Space 1. El Monte au jour d'hui Stephan Palmie 2. Lydia Cabrera's El Monte: Environment, History and Culture Beatriz Rivera-Barnes 3. Lost in El Monte Emily A. Maguire 4. Monte, Mangrove, and Migration: Disrupting Caribbean Borders in Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro's Los documentados Joshua Deckman PART II: El Monte?s Aesthetics Dimensions: Approaches and Crossovers 5. El Monte in Images: Subjects, Spaces, Objects, and Transcultural Interplay Lazara Menendez 6. Wifredo Lam and The Jungle: The Prodigal Son's Return to El Monte Suset Sanchez 7. Queerness, Death, and Spiritualism in Lydia Cabrera and Belkis Ayon Jossianna Arroyo PART III: El Monte, Black Bodies and Afro Caribbean Spiritualities 8. Ifa Margination in El Monte: Focus on a blind spot (and some hypothesis) Erwan Dianteill 9. Ase Omo Osayin, Ewe Aye: Cabrera's Worldmaking in and through El Monte Martin Tsang 10. Queer Nature: Colonial Uncanny and the Black Supernatural in Lydia Cabrera?s El Monte Juan Esteban Plaza Acknowledgments Notes on Contributors Index

"Guide, manual, labyrinth, intricate thicket of reality and fantasy, a work of high literary modernism, scholarly treatise, or an example of the 'marvelous real'? Lydia Cabrera's El Monte is a magical, poetic, and idiosyncratic rendering of Afro-Cuban religious beliefs and practices. We are fortunate to have a collection of essays that approach this baffling and charming book from different perspectives and disciplines: anthropology, ethnobotany, the visual arts, literature, history, queerness, and ecology. These essays reveal that El Monte is more than a text, it is a journey filled with new beginnings." - Alan West-Duran, author of Afro-Cuban Religions and the Arts: A Dog Has Four Legs But Takes One Path "Vibrant, daring, and deeply grounded, this book reimagines Lydia Cabrera's work for our time. Moving across literature, ethnography, and visual culture, the essays uncover how Cabrera's El Monte continues to breathe through the Caribbean's art, spirituality, and politics. This collection proves that Cabrera's forest of symbols is still very much alive and more relevant than ever." - Mabel Cuesta, associate professor, University of Houston