On her book The Cuban Hustle: Culture, Politics, Everyday Life
Cover Interview of January 13, 2021
In a nutshell
The Cuban Hustle documents the myriad ways in which
ordinary Cubans have sought to survive, hustle, and invent alternative cultures
in the twenty-year period following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Exploring
the idea of the “hustle,” which draws on contemporary Cuban vernacular of luchar
(to struggle), inventar (to invent), and jinetear (to hustle), I
show how Cubans have devised alternative strategies for daily survival under
conditions of shortage and how this spirit of creativity and imagination has
been carried into Cuban cultural life.
In the post-Soviet period, the ongoing isolation of Cuba and
the desperate need for outlets of expression, combined with the high quality of
Cuban arts education, state funding for culture, and the new ideas flowing into
Cuban society in the digital era turned the island into a crucible that
fostered all kinds of dynamic cultures. In the book, I argue that conditions of
scarcity have provided the impetus for a culture of spontaneous improvisation.
One unique feature of the book is that it is comprised of
short essays that introduce the reader to a wide swath of Cuba’s subterranean
cultures and social movements. The essays cover urban Black cultures such as
rumba and hip hop; the feminist movement; new Cuban cinema; art collectives and
public art; cultures of documentary filmmaking; the Weekly Packet, or, the
Cuban version of the internet; the Afro-Cuban movement; children filmmakers in
a Cuban rural town; and a hairdressers’ project for social change. There are
reflections on the urban barrios, the Cuban response to 9/11, US attempts to
infiltrate Cuban cultural movements, the death of Fidel Castro, and relations
between Afro-Cubans and African Americans.
The first essay in the book tells the story of my first trip
to Cuba in 1998, and my stay with Afro-Cuban artist Agustín Drake in the town
of Matanzas. In response to my frustrations with the stasis that seemed to
pervade Cuban society, Drake gave me a tour of the city. He showed me how it has
evolved historically and how we can see it from many different perspectives.
“When you are in one particular place, you can’t see some things,” he told me.
I would like the reader to approach my book this way, with an open mind to
seeing and appreciating Cuba from a multitude of angles.
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
In a nutshell
The Cuban Hustle documents the myriad ways in which ordinary Cubans have sought to survive, hustle, and invent alternative cultures in the twenty-year period following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Exploring the idea of the “hustle,” which draws on contemporary Cuban vernacular of luchar (to struggle), inventar (to invent), and jinetear (to hustle), I show how Cubans have devised alternative strategies for daily survival under conditions of shortage and how this spirit of creativity and imagination has been carried into Cuban cultural life.
In the post-Soviet period, the ongoing isolation of Cuba and the desperate need for outlets of expression, combined with the high quality of Cuban arts education, state funding for culture, and the new ideas flowing into Cuban society in the digital era turned the island into a crucible that fostered all kinds of dynamic cultures. In the book, I argue that conditions of scarcity have provided the impetus for a culture of spontaneous improvisation.
One unique feature of the book is that it is comprised of short essays that introduce the reader to a wide swath of Cuba’s subterranean cultures and social movements. The essays cover urban Black cultures such as rumba and hip hop; the feminist movement; new Cuban cinema; art collectives and public art; cultures of documentary filmmaking; the Weekly Packet, or, the Cuban version of the internet; the Afro-Cuban movement; children filmmakers in a Cuban rural town; and a hairdressers’ project for social change. There are reflections on the urban barrios, the Cuban response to 9/11, US attempts to infiltrate Cuban cultural movements, the death of Fidel Castro, and relations between Afro-Cubans and African Americans.
The first essay in the book tells the story of my first trip to Cuba in 1998, and my stay with Afro-Cuban artist Agustín Drake in the town of Matanzas. In response to my frustrations with the stasis that seemed to pervade Cuban society, Drake gave me a tour of the city. He showed me how it has evolved historically and how we can see it from many different perspectives. “When you are in one particular place, you can’t see some things,” he told me. I would like the reader to approach my book this way, with an open mind to seeing and appreciating Cuba from a multitude of angles.