The Chinese Trace in Cuban Literature

Book excerpt: A Chinese proverb that reminds us of this book reads: "The strongest and most luxuriant tree lives from what it has underneath." Thus, Cuban culture has nourishing sources that must be fully known in order to enjoy and understand what we are. Generally, the analyses of the nation's profile pay attention to the Hispanic and African components, and the important role of the Chinese channel in our culture is often overlooked. The Chinese Trace in Cuban Literature is, without a doubt, the most notable effort so far to reveal this trace in our literature, from the 19th century to today, and in different literary genres and discursive types; as its author maintains: "From the creation of novel characters designed within a reproductive realism, the assumption of signs typical of Chinese culture and thought for the shaping of the text, the treatment of historical issueseither in the evolutionary outline of a lineage or in the investigation of significant events, the incursion into this problem from generic modalities or literary renovation proposals, to the aesthetic feat of the transcoding of forms and meanings from Chinese to our language and culture".