Citation

Feracho L. Hispania (AATSP) 2000; 83(1): 51-58.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2000, American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese)

DOI

10.2307/346113

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In "Los ojos de eleggua" and "Cuento la despedida" from the collection Richard trajo su flauta, the poet Nancy Morejón's use of references to the Afro-Cuban god Eleggua and Afro-Cuban rites in a New World context represents what literary critic Brathwaite has called "the literature of reconnection"-the most dynamic interaction of an individual with African heritage. In "Los ojos de eleggua," the individual reconnection with Africa is only temporarily balanced, while "Cuento la despedida" symbolically presents Afro-Cuban religion as ultimately the most effective stabilizing force. In both poems, the incorporation of Afro-Cuban religion into a privatized, New World context symbolically creates a spatialized poetics of Cubanness on a personal and national level, resulting in a dynamics of the "Cuban homespace."