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
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“Steal away and stay away.
Don’t join too many gangs. Join few if any.
Join the United States and join the family
But not much in between unless a college.”
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“The line that I am urging as today’s conventional wisdom is not a denial of consciousness. It is often called, with more reason, a repudiation of mind. It is indeed a repudiation of mind as a second substance, over and above body. It can be described less harshly as an identification of mind with some of the faculties, states, and activities of the body. Mental states and events are a special subclass of the states and events of the human or animal body.”
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