Viva Cuba through Literature

In the wake of the Arizona Law recently passed to give authorities the right to racially profile Hispanics, I thought it would be interesting to highlight a couple Cubans who have contributed to the literary world. Two people who have contributed to the United States and the world are Jose Yglesias and Severo Sarduy; both were Cuban immigrants who arrived at this country for a new life and prospered. Not only did they get fame and fortune (the fortune you obtain when you accomplish self fulfilling goals), but they gave us great literary pieces to reference for years, decades, centuries to come.
Jose Yglesias was a Cuban writer born and raised in Ybor City, Florida a section of Tampa where most Cuban immigrants migrate to. In 1937 he served the United States navy during World War two. He studied at Black Mountain College and was the film critic for The Daily Worker. For more than 10 years he was an executive for the pharmaceutical company Merck, Sharp & Dohme.
Jose Yglesias wrote seven novels and four works of non-fiction. Jose Yglesias was known throughout the country for writing A Wake in Ybor City (1973), about Cubans who immigrated to Florida and The Franco Years (1975), a series of interviews, with people who lived in Spain under Francisco Franco's dictatorship.
Yglesias died at the age of seventy five at Beth Israel Hospital in Manhattan of cancer November 1995 of cancer. He was one of the greats of this country’s foreign literature like Ernest Hemmingway and Emily Dickinson. Another great writer, novelist, playwright, and critic was Severo Sarduy.
Severo Sarduy was born in Camaguey, Cuba in February 25, 1937. He went to elementary and high school in Cuba and earned a degree in Bachelors of Arts and Sciences in 1955 at the Institute of Higher Learning. After that he went to Havana to study medicine but was only able to complete a year in school because the dictator at the time Fulgencio Batista closed down the school.
Sarduy was an author and critic. His collection of essays on other Latinoamerican writers is published in his “Esrito sobre un cuerpo.” He also wrote “De donde son los cantantes" in 1967 in mexico which put him on the map as a leading novelist because he was published in the same printing company as Joaquin Mortiz. Sarduy also wrote playwrights like “La playa” and published a poetry book entitled “Big Bang.”
Unfortunately Sarduy died at the age of fifty six of AIDS in a hospital in Paris where he moved in 1959 to study at The School of Louvre. In Paris he wrote for the journal "Tel Quel", where he was influenced by Structuralist and Poststructuralist movements, and formed literary relationships with Francois Wahl and Roland Barthes.
These two literary greats inspired many writers and have inspired me very much as well. They arrived here in the United States for a different opportunity and to make a new life for themselves and contributed much more than just words on a page. They contributed a passion for words on a page and made many people feel that passion as well.