En face bilingual edition of only extant Latin American slave narrative written during slavery era. Original Spanish punctuation, spelling, and syntax corrected and modernized by Schulman; translation is of this new version of text. Introduction, notes, chronology give extensive background. Excellent for undergraduate classroom use. Scholars may prefer original text"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.

Volumen 2: Espa?a is the second text in the series Las literaturas hisp?nicas: Introducci?n a su estudio. It contains examples of poetry, short stories, essays, novels, and plays by major literary figures of Spain from the Middle Ages to today. The book can be used along with Volumen 1, which provides a foundation for the reading and understanding of various literary genres in their cultural contexts.

The essays in this collection reflect two of Marti's key observations during his time in the United States: first, how did he, an exile living in New York, view and read his North American neighbors from a sociocultural, political and literary perspective? Second, how did his perception of the modern nation impact his own concepts of race, capital punishment, poetics, and nation building for Cuba? The overarching endeavor of this project is to view and read Marti with the same critical or modern eye with which he viewed and read Spain, Cuba, Latin America and the United States. This volume, combining many of the most relevant experts in the field of Marti studies, attempts to answer those questions. It hopes to broaden the understanding and extend the influence of one of Americas' (speaking of the collective Americas) most prolific and important writers, particularly within the very nation where his chronicles, poetry, and journalism were written. In spite of the political differences still separating Cuba and the United States, understanding Marti's relevancy is crucial to bridging the gap between these nations.

Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda (1814-1873) was born in Cuba and split her life between Spain and her native island. Author of original novels, short stories and drama, she wrote -Sab- (1836-1841), considered the first Cuban novel about slavery in the island. Within its plots and subplots -Sab- comprises a modern message, as Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda, a highly prized author during her active literary life, exposes and advocates for the principles of freedom and equal human as well as feminine rights by means of a highly romantic story, building up a message that still stands valid today, as in the contemporary world human rights are subject of violent violations every day. The novel's first edition (1841), published in Spain, suffered the island's colonial government censorship. Upon arrival to La Habana the copies were seized at the Cuba Royal Customs, the official Censor claiming that they -express doctrines subversive to the island's slavery system-. However, the vast majority of the modern criticism has resisted classifying this Avellaneda writing as -anti-slavery-. Aiming to rectify this conception, prof. Ivan A.Schulman's foreword to this new edition highlights the anti-slavery elements imbedded in the text, all the while accepting that the author's voice provenience is the -center-, or -metropolis-, thus her speech shows many aspects that can be seen to agree with the Cuban -sugar aristocracy- slavery supporting stance. The results of this duality is a two faced novel, a story full with cogitations and contradictions about race, color, -whitening-, slavery and feminism, intertwined in a transgressor speech deeply rooted in the XIX Century Cuba.

"Lucia Jerez", the only novel written by Jose Marti (Cuba, 1853-1895) ranks among the first and most important novels of Hispanic American Modernism. This work, overlooked or trivialized by critics over the years, today is considered a revolutionary narrative because in it the writer experiments with techniques that pre-announce the XX Century Vanguard writers, and even contemporary post-modernism texts. This is a novel built upon symbols, impressionist and expressionist prose, full of visionary enunciations that depict the present and future of an off-balance world; and the fragile and inconstant experiences of our daily life. Marti, according to his own confession, wrote the novel originally under the title of "Amistad Funesta" ("Regrettable Friendship") in seven days for a New York magazine. He was forced to follow the guidelines set by the magazine's director: there had to be lots of love; a death; many young women, no sinful passion; and nothing that parents and clergymen would reject. And it had to be Hispanic American. The Cuban confessed he disliked the narrative genre.;But years afterwards he changed his mind and thought about a modified version of his novel, with a different title because he realized, after reading Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle" Tom's "Cabin" and Helen Hunt Jackson's "Ramona", that novels could be a powerful social and political vehicle. In "Lucia Jerez" many critics have preferred to see a fundamentally aesthetic creation, the fruit of the end of the XIX Century Modernist stylistic innovations. But today (re)reading, "under the surface" of the text, as Marti preferred, one can discover a contemporary narrative that explores the disconnections and anomalies of modern life. In the preliminary study to this text Prof. Ivan A. Schulman examines Jose Marti's stance with regard to novelistic narratives, explores "Lucia Jerez's" structure and style, and adds notes that contribute to a novel, in-depth comprehension of Marti's text.