On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality, and Culture / Edition 1

by Louis A. Pérez

Overview

With this masterful work, Louis A. Perez Jr. transforms the way we view Cuba and its relationship with the United States. On Becoming Cuban is a sweeping cultural history of the sustained encounter between the peoples of the two countries and of the ways that this encounter helped shape Cubans' identity, nationality, and sense of modernity from the early 1850s until the revolution of 1959.

Using an enormous range of Cuban and U.S. sources—from archival records and oral interviews to popular magazines, novels, and motion pictures—Perez reveals a powerful web of everyday, bilateral connections between the United States and Cuba and shows how U.S. cultural forms had a critical influence on the development of Cubans' sense of themselves as a people and as a nation. He also articulates the cultural context for the revolution that erupted in Cuba in 1959. In the middle of the twentieth century, Perez argues, when economic hard times and political crises combined to make Cubans painfully aware that their American-influenced expectations of prosperity and modernity would not be realized, the stage was set for revolution.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807858998
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	03/10/2008
Series:	H. Eugene and Lillian Youngs Lehman Series
Edition description:	With a new preface by the author
Pages:	608
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.34(d)

About the Author

Louis A. Perez Jr. is J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His books include To Die in Cuba: Suicide and Society and The War of 1898: The United States and Cuba in History and Historiography (both from the University of North Carolina Press).

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

A thoughtful exploration of Cuban-American relations.—U.S. News & World Report Online



Long-time Cuban expert Perez has written an important and groundbreaking historical study of Cuban culture from 1850 through the Cuban revolution in 1959. . . . An important book on Cuba that will be of interest in most academic and large public library collections.—Library Journal



A lucid analysis of Cuba's stormy historical relationship with the U.S. from the middle of the 1800s, when Spain ruled the island, to the 1959 Revolution. . . . This marvelously nuanced book should appeal to all educated readers. Extensively documented, it paints a detailed and convincing portrait of the long love-hate relationship between Cuba and the U.S. On Becoming Cuban is arguably the most scholarly book written on its subject.—Choice



[This] is a remarkable book. . . . What Perez manages to do . . . is to bring considerable insight and depth of analysis to a subject that Cubanists discuss incessantly but have not yet articulated in such a systemic manner. Most striking is that this book shows how Cuban culture was and is strongly imbued with U.S.-influenced expectations of modernity and prosperity without being any less Cuban.—Latin American Research Review



I know of no book ever written on Cuba that carries the punch of Perez's On Becoming Cuban. With a clear-eyed mastery of thousands of details comprising the texture of life in Cuba, Perez builds a complex portrait of the infinitely intertwined lives of Cubans and North Americans from the late nineteenth century to the 1950s. Eschewing an older narrative of Cuban nationality defined from within and in opposition to the United States, Perez demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that Cuban national identity was wedded to a notion of modernity, and to an image of consumption, that placed the United States at its very center. The Cuba he sketches is thus not an exotic tropical republic, but a familiar neighbor. Through subtle and detailed portraits of tourism and baseball, music and merchandising, education and evangelism, he paints a picture of two national populations in continual interaction.—Rebecca J. Scott, University of Michigan



Perez's sophisticated depiction . . . gives dimension and movement to U.S./Cuban history, and it takes the first (and giant) step into Cuban cultural history. . . . Perez's rendition of the points of exchange and his discussion of culture's evolutionary formation will entertain the academic and popular readership alike. The writing is engaging and pictures illustrate the author's references. . . . This is a new hue given to the U.S. expansionist enterprise.—The Americas



[A] fascinating book. . . . Meticulously documented and carefully referenced, as well as embedded in the recent literature on Cuban history, culture, and politics. . . . The author's engaging style weaves together biographic details with broader collective narrations and his own personal interpretations. . . . A painstaking and sophisticated analysis of a neglected aspect of Cuban historiography—the influence of American popular culture on Cuban national identity. . . . A fine-grained case study of the transnational flows of ideas, images, and practices that helped to define the Cuban nation vis-a-vis the United States. . . . Eloquent and elegant.—American Historical Review

Editorial Reviews

A thought-provoking, persuasive, enlightening, and at times humorous account.
--"Diplomatic History"

Perez is one of the pioneers who tenaciously continued to work on Cuba despite the obstacles posed by both Washington and Havana. "On Becoming Cuban" is a roving exploration . . .
--"New York Times"

Perez's book provides a masterly narrative supported by solid documentation framed in a coherent analysis.
--"Journal of American History"

This is a tour de force by a great historian.
--John H. Coatsworth, Harvard University

This is a tour de force by a great historian.
aJohn H. Coatsworth, Harvard University

This is a tour de force by a great historian.
_John H. Coatsworth, Harvard University

PAEA(c)rez is one of the pioneers who tenaciously continued to work on Cuba despite the obstacles posed by both Washington and Havana. "On Becoming Cuban" is a roving exploration . . .
"New York Times"

PAEA(c)rez's book provides a masterly narrative supported by solid documentation framed in a coherent analysis.
"Journal of American History"

This is a tour de force by a great historian.
John H. Coatsworth, Harvard University

P??rez is one of the pioneers who tenaciously continued to work on Cuba despite the obstacles posed by both Washington and Havana. "On Becoming Cuban" is a roving exploration . . .
—"New York Times"

P??rez's book provides a masterly narrative supported by solid documentation framed in a coherent analysis.
—"Journal of American History"

This is a tour de force by a great historian.
—John H. Coatsworth, Harvard University

From the Publisher