Cuba Today | Carlos A. Aguilera

Cuba Today | Diaspora and Literature
When: Tuesday, February 13, 2007 7:00PM
Where: Performance Space | UCSD Visual Arts Facility | Sixth College (on Russell Lane, next to Pepper Canyon Hall)

Poet, prose stylist, and cultural critic Carlos A. Aguilera (Havana, Cuba, 1970) will visit UCSD, engaging in conversation and offering a reading of his work, as sponsored by CILAS, Communication and Visual Arts.

The alternative magazine of culture and the arts that Carlos Alberto Aguilera co-edited in Havana from 1997 to 2002, Diáspora(s), was during its lifespan the premier space for critical debate and alternative culture until it was officially discontinued by the state cultural administrators. This led to Aguilera's departure from Cuba under the auspices of the international Pen Club. The writer lives his exile in Dresden, Germany, and has been denied re-entry into his native country. He has forged intensive dialogue and exchanges with writers from the former Soviet Bloc, particularly from the German Democratic Republic. Influenced by the works of philosopher Hannah Arendt, Aguilera's writings reflect on life under totalitarianism, not only in Cuba but in a re-created China (home to his maternal ancestors). Aguilera is also part of a growing intellectual public sphere outside of Cuba that has fashioned new critical forms of engagement and diasporic citizenship. Even as artists and writers envision a democratic process for the country, this generation of young Cuban intellectuals consider themselves to be on the left of the political spectrum, and they reject the totalitarian aims of any government, regardless of its ideology.

Carlos Alberto Aguilera Chang (Havana, Cuba, 1970) was the co-editor from 1997 to 2002 of the alternative magazine Diáspora(s), in Havana, Cuba. He has published several volumes of poetry, fiction, and essays, including Retrato de A. Hopper y su esposa (Cuba 1996), Das Kapital (Cuba 1997), and Teoría del alma china (Mexico 2006) –all of them translated into other languages such as German, French, English and Croatian. He is also the editor of several anthologies of Cuban poetry and prose. In addition, his texts and articles have appeared in Letras libres, Revista de Occidente, Diario de Poesía, Crítica, Manuskripte, Boundary 2, Tsé tsé, Mandorla, Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana, La Habana Elegante, Cubista, Babylon, Quorum, etc., and in newspapers such as Frankfurter Rundschau, El País, and Die Presse. He regularly writes reviews for The Miami Herald, in Florida. He currently has a writing fellowship from Kulturstiftung in the city of Dresden and Dresdner Bank, in Germany.

This event is co-sponsored by the UCSD Departments of Communication and Visual Arts.