Cabrera, Lydia (1900–1991)

Lydia Cabrera (b. 20 May 1900; d. 19 September 1991), Cuban writer and anthropologist. Daughter of a well-known lawyer and historian, she was tutored at home, where she also became entranced by the tales of the black servants. After her father's death, she studied painting and Oriental art at L'école du Louvre in Paris (1927–1930). Her stay in France coincided with European interest in primitive cultures, a trend that reawakened her childhood fascination with African Cuban culture. She began her new studies at the Sorbonne and did her research in Cuba in 1930. In Paris again, she wrote Cuentos negros de Cuba (1934), published in French (1936) to great acclaim. In 1938 she moved back to Cuba, intent on continuing her studies in African Cuban folklore and conducting interviews among the black population. A second collection of short stories (¿Por qué?… Cuentos negros de Cuba), written in the same direct and colorful style, appeared in 1948. In 1954 she published her first anthropological work, El monte: Notas sobre las religiones, la magia, las supersticiones y el folklore de los negros criollos y del pueblo de Cuba, considered by some to be her most important contribution to African Cuban culture. In the 1950s Cabrera became a consultant to the National Institute of Culture and published three major works: Refranes de negros viejos (1955), Anagó: vocabulario Lucumí (1957), and La sociedad secreta Abakuá (1958).

The Cuban Revolution burst upon her whirlwind of activity, and Cabrera moved to Miami, losing most of her research. Slowly, she reestablished her career and in 1970 published Otán Iyebiyé: Las piedras preciosas and the fictional tales of Ayapá: Cuentos de Jicotea (1971). After a stay in Spain to research some of her lost sources, Cabrera returned to Miami. She received two honorary degrees—from Denison (1977) and the University of Redlands (1981)—and continued her anthropological research: La laguna sagrada de San Joaquín (1973), Yemayá y Ochún (1974), Anaforuana: ritual y símbolos de la iniciación en la sociedad secreta Abakuá (1975), La Regla Kimbisa del Santo Cristo del Buen Viaje (1977), Trinidad de Cuba (1977), Reglas de Congo, Palomonte Mayombe (1979), Los animales en el folklore y la magia de Cuba (1988), La lengua sagrada de los Ñáñigos (1988), and Supersticiones y buenos consejos (1988). She also published two collections of short stories: Francisco y Francisca: Chascarrillos de negros viejos (1976) and Cuentos para grandes, chicos y retrasados mentales (1983).

See alsoAfricans in Hispanic America .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

José Antonio Madrigal and Reynaldo Sánchez, eds. Homenaje a Lydia Cabrera (1978).

Nicolás Kanellos, ed., Biographical Dictionary of Hispanic Literature in the United States: The Literature of Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, and other Hispanic Writers (1989).

Julio A. Martínez, ed., Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Cuban Literature (1990).

Additional Bibliography

Castellanos, Jorge. Pioneros de la etnografía afrocubana: Fernando Ortiz, Rómulo Lachatañeré, Lydia Cabrera. Miami: Ediciones Universal, 2003.

Gutiérrez, Mariela. Lydia Cabrera: Aproximaciones míticosimbólicas a su cuentística. Madrid: Editorial Verbum, 1997.

Rodríguez-Mangual, Edna M. Lydia Cabrera and the Construction of an Afro-Cuban Cultural Identity. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2004.

                                     MarÍa A. Salgado