Two Cubans win Casa de las Américas Literary Prize

HAVANA, Cuba.- Cuban authors Reynaldo García Blanco, in poetry, and Emilio Jorge Rodríguez, in Studies on the black presence in contemporary Americas and the Caribbean, won the Casa de las Américas Literary Prize in its 58th edition.

 

García Blanco obtained it for the poem book ¨Esto es un disco de vinilo¨ which contains Russian songs to listen in English and vice versa, mainly because the jury considered it possesses an expressive clarity of exhibition, presents poems of refined writing with a delineated humor and serene irony.

 

Rodríguez deserved the award for the text ¨Una suave linea de montañas azules¨ that tells important chapters of the history of exchanges between Cuba and Haiti through the study of the relations of Nicolás Guillén with artists and intellectuals of the sister island.

 

Ecuadorian Ernesto Carrión won the prize in the genre of novel with ¨Incendiamos las yeguas en la madrugada¨, which offers a crude and vibrant social picture which intention is not only to show a stratified and violent urban landscape, where disenchantment and nightmare are the constants of a life equation, but he manages to give the narrative a specific literary weight combining a dynamic structure with well-managed areas of suspense.

 

Pedro Agudelo Rondón, from Colombia, was awarded the prize in the category of essay on a historical social theme by ¨America picturesca y otros relatos ecfrasticos de America Latina¨, a text that reinterprets the concept of imaginary in order to creatively think of Latin America in dialogue with the cultural tradition in its many expressions.

 

 

Argentina´s Liliana Villanueva achieved the highest recognition in testimonial literature with ¨Lloverá siempre¨, an interview with Uruguayan journalist and writer María Esther Giglio, who won the Casa de las Américas Award in testimony in 1970, which has a catchy open colloquial language, sincere with a unique and warm voice, with touching moments and others arising from intelligent humor.

 

In addition, Brazilian María Valeria Renzende won the prize in Brazilian literature with ¨Outros cantos¨, in which, from her travel memories, she recalls her choices and personal sacrifices when she worked in adult literacy in the northeast of her country.

 

Roberto Fernández Retamar, Casa de las Americas president, announced the special prizes José Lezama Lima, in poetry, which went to Ecuadorian Raúl Vallejo by ¨Mistica del Tabernario¨, and the Ezequiel Martínez Estrada, of essay, corresponded to the work ¨Cuestiones y horizontes de la independencia histórico estructural a la colonialidad-descolonialidad del poder¨ by Peruvian Anibal Quijano.

 

The José María Arguedas special prize for narrative was won by Colombian Pablo Montoya with ¨Triptico de la infamia.¨

 

Source: ACN