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As an island--a geographical space with mutable and porous borders--Cuba has never been a fixed cultural, political, or geographical entity. Migration and exile have always informed the Cuban experience, and loss and displacement have figured as central preoccupations among Cuban artists and intellectuals. A major expression of this experience is the unconventional, multi-generational, itinerant, and ongoing art exhibit CAFÉ: The Journeys of Cuban Artists . In Cuban Artists Across the Diaspora , Andrea O'Reilly Herrera focuses on the CAFÉ project to explore Cuba's long and turbulent history of movement and rupture from the perspective of its visual arts and to meditate upon the manner in which one reconstitutes and reinvents the self in the context of diaspora.

Approaching the Cafeteros' art from a cultural studies perspective, O'Reilly Herrera examines how the history of Cuba informs their work and establishes their connections to past generations of Cuban artists. In interviews with more than thirty artists, including José Bedia, María Brito, Leandro Soto, Glexis Novoa, Baruj Salinas, and Ana Albertina Delgado, O'Reilly Herrera also raises critical questions regarding the many and sometimes paradoxical ways diasporic subjects self-affiliate or situate themselves in the narratives of scattering and displacement. She demonstrates how the Cafeteros' artmaking involves a process of re-rooting, absorption, translation, and synthesis that simultaneously conserves a series of identifiable Cuban cultural elements while re-inscribing and transforming them in new contexts.

An important contribution to both diasporic and transnational studies and discussions of contemporary Cuban art, Cuban Artists Across the Diaspora ultimately testifies to the fact that a long tradition of Cuban art is indeed flourishing outside the island.

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CHOICE Review

Esthetically appealing and critically grounded, this volume examines displacement as a potential force for artistic creativity within the Cuban diasporic community. Herrera (literature, women's studies, and ethnic studies, Univ. of Colorado, Colorado Springs) focuses her argument on the works of the cafeteros, artists who have participated in CAFE: The Journeys of Cuban Artists, an evolving, multilocation art exhibition curated by Cuban artist Leandro Soto. These shows bring together artists of different generations, born on and off the island, who work in diverse media. The book provides stunning visual examples and analyses of the art, along with discussions of each artist's themes and his or her connections to the island, artistic movements, politics, and other cafeteros. Herrera contends that displacement is a long-standing reality for Cubans and contextualizes current causes of Cuban displacement within the island's history of creolization. She draws from major postcolonial theorists, including Homi Bhabha, Stuart Hall, and Edward Said, and from Nicolas Bourriaud's theory of the radicant (roots take hold, thrive, and spread). This book is a testament to the power of culture as a source of identity and survival. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty/professionals. L. E. Shaw Elmira College

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Andrea O'Reilly Herrera is Professor of Literature and Director of Women's and Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. In addition to being a published poet and literary critic, she is the author of a number of critical works including ReMembering Cuba: Legacy of a Diaspora , the novel The Pearl of the Antilles , the edited collection of essays Cuba: Idea of a Nation Displaced, and the coedited textbook The Matrix Reader: Examining the Dynamics of Oppression and Privilege .