Lydia Cabrera - Main Work Themes

Main Work Themes

Her career spanned decades before the Revolution, as well as many years after the Revolution took over Cuba. Although she was never schooled in anthropology, she takes a very anthropological approach to studying her subject matter. The main theme in her work is to bring focus to the once-marginalized Afro-Cubans giving them a respectable identity. Through the use of imagery and storytelling throughout her work she seeks to retell the history of the Cuban people through the Afro-Cuban lens. Generally, her work blurs the line as what society has deemed as "fact" or "fiction." She attempts to pose ideas and theories that force people to question what they have been told.In Afro-Cuban Tales = Cuentos Negros De Cuba, She writes, “They dance when they're born, they dance when they die, they dance for killings. They celebrate everything!” (Cabrera 67). Here, she is connecting Afro-Cuban tales with African rituals because it is import to celebrate birth, passage to adulthood, marriage, and death.