ANNE BIRKENMAIER, ESHTER WHITFIELD (EDS.): Havana Beyond the Ruins: Cultural Mappings after 1989. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011.

Abstract

Scholars of Cuba are constantly trying, and failing, to escape Havana. Events
and sources based in the capital too often substitute for knowledge of the island
as a whole. From this point of view, Anne Birkenmaier and Esther Whitfield’s
edited collection Havana Beyond the Ruins might be accused of adding another
Havana-centric entry to an already Havana-centric scholarly corpus. And yet,
rather than simply mining the city, its people, and its archives for the stories
they tell about the nation, the contributors to this impressive volume endeavor
to re-particularize the capital, taking the physical, lived, and imagined spaces
of urban life as their subject of inquiry, as texts to be read.