Coming To The United States
She left the country shortly after the Revolution and never returned. She left in 1960 as an exile following the Cuban revolution led by Fidel Castro. She went first to Madrid and settled later in Miami, FL. She moved to Miami, Florida, where she remained until the rest of her life. She received several honorary doctorate degrees, including one from the University of Miami in 1987. Cabrera described her stories as "transpositions," but they went much further than a simple retelling. She recreated and altered elements, characters, and themes of African and universal folklores, but she also modified the traditional stories by adding details of Cuban customs of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Toward the last years of her life, Lydia Cabrera worked diligently to edit and publish the many notes she had collected during more than thirty years of research in Cuba
The real reason why she left is still unknown. Some claim that she left because of the lifestyle the Revolution was trying to instill. For many years, Cabrera had stated her dislike for the Revolution and socialist-Marxist ideology. Others claim she left because members of the Abakuás were hunting her down since she had made their secret society public. Although the reason why she left is unknown, she never returned and spent the rest of her life living in Miami until her death in September 19th 1991.
Read more about this topic: Lydia Cabrera
Famous quotes containing the words coming to the, united states, coming to, coming, united and/or states:
“Some of my friends spoke as if I was coming to the woods on purpose to freeze myself.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control—”indoctrination” we might say—exercised through the mass media.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“He was discontented and wasted his life into the bargain; and yet he rated it as a gain in coming to America, that here you could get tea, and coffee, and meat every day. But the only true America is that country where you are at liberty to pursue such a mode of life as may enable you to do without these, and where the state does not endeavor to compel you to sustain slavery and war and other superfluous expenses which directly or indirectly result from the use of such things.”
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—Anne Roiphe (20th century)
“I hate to do what everybody else is doing. Why, only last week, on Fifth Avenue and some cross streets, I noticed that every feminine citizen of these United States wore an artificial posy on her coat or gown. I came home and ripped off every one of the really lovely refrigerator blossoms that were sewn on my own bodices.”
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“I do seriously believe that if we can measure among the States the benefits resulting from the preservation of the Union, the rebellious States have the larger share. It destroyed an institution that was their destruction. It opened the way for a commercial life that, if they will only embrace it and face the light, means to them a development that shall rival the best attainments of the greatest of our States.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)