Araceli Tinajero – författare

The practice of reading aloud has a long history, and the tradition still survives in Cuba as a hard-won right deeply embedded in cigar factory workers' culture. In El Lector, Araceli Tinajero deftly traces the evolution of the reader from nineteenth-century Cuba to the present and its eventual dissemination to Tampa, Key West, Puerto Rico, and Mexico. In interviews with present-day and retired readers, she records testimonies that otherwise would have been lost forever, creating a valuable archive for future historians. Through a close examination of journals, newspapers, and personal interviews, Tinajero relates how the reading was organized, how the readers and readings were selected, and how the process affected the relationship between workers and factory owners. Because of the reader, cigar factory workers were far more cultured and in touch with the political currents of the day than other workers. But it was not only the reading material, which provided political and literary information that yielded self-education, that influenced the workers; the act of being read to increased the discipline and timing of the artisan's job.

Orientalismo en el modernismohispanoamericano, de Araceli Tinajero,es un novedoso estudio que analiza el modernismo en Latinoamérica desde unaperspectiva fresca y original. Lo que hace a este texto único es su enfoque enlas representaciones de las imágenes, los artefactos culturales y el pensamientooriental (principalmente japonés) en la escritura modernista. La autora hablajaponés y conoce la cultura del Japón. Con su conocimiento nos acerca a losescritores modernistas que eran cronistas o corresponsales y lograron llegar alLejano Oriente donde inventaron/construyeron una forma de exotismo que derivapero difiere del Orientalismo que propone Edward Said. En Asia esos escritoresdescubrieron que había un acercamiento cultural muy sutil (no europeo) entreLatinoamérica y el Oriente. El resultado de ese encuentro es único porquepresenta un paradigma diferente, un Orientalismo que se aleja de una miradaeuropea.Basándoseen la etnografía, los estudios poscoloniales, la teoría literaria, la historiadel arte y la teoría de los relatos de viaje, Tinajero analiza diversos textosmodernistas y demuestra cómo la escritura "periférica" del modernismo escritadesde la modernidad occidental no es realmente marginal. El análisis de losartefactos culturales en los textos modernistas nos permite conocer el modernismomás a fondo y a comprender el encuentro cultural entre Oriente y Occidente. Esefenómeno sobre todo ofrece la alternativa de una visión del Oriente desde unaperspectiva enfáticamente hispanoamericana.ElOrientalismo que propone Tinajero basándose en el estudio del modernismohispanoamericano es innovador y representa una invaluable contribución a losestudios críticos del modernismo latinoamericano.Araceli Tinajero's Orientalismo en el modernismo hispanoamericano falls within the present revisionist trend with respect to Spanish American modernism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The text's uniqueness stems from its focus on allusions to images, artifacts, and thought from the East – primarily Japan – found in central and peripheral writings within the Spanish American movement. The author knows the Japanese language and culture and brings her knowledge to bear in her discussion of modernist writers who, chiefly as chroniclers and correspondents, made their way to the East and there invented/constructed a form of exoticism (Orientalism, following but diverging from Edward Said), while discovering affinities between non-European tendencies within their own American environment and Eastern culture. The result of this encounter was a unique, non-European Orientalism. Drawing on ethnography, postcolonial studies, literary theory, art history, and travel theory, Tinajero analyzes a selection of modernist texts to show how writing at the margin of Western modernism-modernity is at once within and without the mainstream. The examination of Oriental cultural artifacts in modernista texts contributes to our understanding of modernism, of the East-West encounter, and of the culturally specific configurations of these phenomena in South America. Tinajero's concept of Orientalism focused on Spanish American modernism is a fresh approach and represents a valuable contribution to Spanish American modernist scholarship.

First Published in 2016. If scholarship on Cuban studies after the 1959 revolution focused on the historical and cultural aspects of the construction of a socialist order, the post-1989 crisis of socialism in Central and Eastern Europe raised questions about the island’s state as a socialist model. The scholarly gaze gradually began to focus on possibilities for alternative transformations at various levels of social life rather than on the deepening of traditional twentieth-century state socialism. This volume explores the newly emergent themes and debates about Cuban society and history.

First Published in 2016. If scholarship on Cuban studies after the 1959 revolution focused on the historical and cultural aspects of the construction of a socialist order, the post-1989 crisis of socialism in Central and Eastern Europe raised questions about the island’s state as a socialist model. The scholarly gaze gradually began to focus on possibilities for alternative transformations at various levels of social life rather than on the deepening of traditional twentieth-century state socialism. This volume explores the newly emergent themes and debates about Cuban society and history.

Beginning in 1990, thousands of Spanish speakers emigrated to Japan. A Cultural History of Spanish Speakers in Japan focuses on the intellectuals, literature, translations, festivals, cultural associations, music (bolero, tropical music, and pop, including reggaeton), dance (flamenco, tango and salsa), radio, newspapers, magazines, libraries, and blogs produced in Spanish, in Japan, by Latin Americans and Spaniards who have lived in that country over the last three decades.  Based on in-depth research in archives throughout the country as well as field work including several interviews, Japanese-speaking Mexican scholar Araceli Tinajero uncovers a transnational, contemporary cultural history that is not only important for today but for future generations.