Beyond Cuban Waters: África, La Yuma, and the Island's Global Imagination by Paul Ryer

Abstract

Reviewed by: Beyond Cuban Waters: África, La Yuma, and the Island's Global Imagination by Paul Ryer Lisandro Pérez Paul Ryer, Beyond Cuban Waters: África, La Yuma, and the Island's Global Imagination. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2018. 226 pp. In the introductory chapter to Beyond Cuban Waters, Paul Ryer lays out the scope: "Core topics of this work include socialism, state bureaucracy, surveillance; the economic and social crisis of the Special Period and resulting everyday struggles of luchando, inventando, and resolviendo; the reproduction and transformation of racism and racial identities; cubanidad, tourism and national: foreign boundaries; Cuban religion/religious revival; reciprocity, socios, and sociolismo; gender divisions and sexuality; socialist theory; and the transformation of production, distribution, and consumption." The introductory chapter, therefore, leaves the reader adrift in the vast menu of topics the author tells us he intends to cover, thus failing to provide, at the outset, a clear statement of the focus of the work. The introduction is also weighed down by an extensive and detailed review of the literature that, while impressive and laudable, produces a disparate set of conceptual references that do not contribute to a definitive answer to the critical question every introduction should address: what is this book about? [End Page 331] But persist, dear reader, beyond the introduction and you will be rewarded with what may be the best ethnography of contemporary Cuba published in recent years. Starting with chapter 1, the author lays out the results of his research, carried out during an extended period of residence on the island as well as during numerous subsequent return trips. Each of the core chapters has a clear focus and addresses in turn the principal concerns that evidently animated the author's research: Cuba's global imagination, the interplay of the national and international, and race and the evolution of national identity. Chapter 1 is on La Yuma and Chapter 2 is on África (purposely denoted in Spanish), both foreign-based constructs that, because of historical processes during the revolution, became part of how Cubans see the world and their own place in it, shaping identity, ideology, and consumption patterns. If those two chapters present fresh approaches to viewing Cuban everyday reality, chapter 3, "Color, Mestizaje, and Belonging in Cuba," travels a much more worn path of scholarship on Cuba with its focus on race and national identity, fluidity of racial categories, and state discourses on race. Nevertheless, it is an excellent treatment of the subject, especially because it is laced, as is most of the book, with revealing anecdotes and transcripts from the investigator's audio recorder, which frame the issues in the respondents' voices and in Ryer's personal encounters in the field. Those boxed passages are invaluable to the narrative and in establishing the author's points. Chapter 4 is the most original section of the book. Entitled "Beyond a Boundary," the chapter is about the "borders of Cubanness," the process by which Cubanness is manifested in the island's diasporas. The largest Cuban diaspora, Cuban Americans, is only the starting point for the chapter, providing the conceptual framework for looking at diasporas formed not by leaving Cuba, as is the case with Cuban Americans, but by going to Cuba during formative years, as was the case with Sudanese, Ghanaian, and other young Africans who studied in Cuba and now live elsewhere. Using concepts from the extensive literature on Cuban Americans, such as the "1.5 generation" construct developed primarily by Gustavo Pérez Firmat and Rubén Rumbaut to look at the experience of youth who were displaced from Cuba to the United States during their adolescent years and became bilingual and bicultural, Ryer examines various groups of African adolescents who experienced displacement to Cuba, resulting in the formation of elements of a Cuban identity that survived the students' residence in the island during those critical developmental years. Nostalgia for Cuba, for example, is one trait shared by both seemingly dissimilar groups: Cuban Americans and Cuban-educated African students. It is a compelling argument for the borderless reach of Cubanness. The book's conclusion is a succinct reflective summary of the book's core arguments, the sort of...