On the day marking the 150th anniversary of Cuba’s first war for independence, Ana Dopico, editor of a two-volume anthology of letters by the “Apostle of Independence,” José Marti Pérez, sits down with the authors of two new books exploring the largely unexamined and forgotten history of Cuban NYC — the largest early Latino community in North America​, where much of the anti-colonial movement was based.

​Nancy Raquel Mirabal’s Suspect Freedoms – the first book to look at Cuban racial and sexual politics in Gotham during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries — explores how the fear that Cuba might become “another Haiti” was critical in the early colonial diaspora, prompting Afro-Cubans to become the authors of their own experiences by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Lisandro Perez’s Sugar, Cigars, and Revolution brings to life the dramatic story of Cuban NYC during the nineteenth century, a community that emerged from the city’s sugar trade to became one of the principal scenarios for the long struggle for independence from Spain.

New York was the primary destination for Cuban émigrés in search of education, opportunity, wealth, and freedom.

6:30pm

Skylight Room

No RSVP Required

Co-sponsored by The Graduate Center’s Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies, NYU Press, and WBAI/Pacifica Radio’s “Cuba in Focus.” ​

​Books will be available for purchase.

Event link