Jose Marti Reader; writings on the Americas

Author Mirta Muniz (ed.)
By Jose Marti. Prose and poetry writings on the Americas.An outstanding anthology of the writings, poetry and letters of Jose Marti -one of the most brilliant and impassioned Latin American intellectuals of the 19th Century.
| Publisher: Ocean Press | ISBN no: 1-875284-12-5 | Year: 1999

£11.99 inc p&p

| Check Basket |

José Martí is one of Latin America’s most luminous voices. Born in Havana, Cuba in 1853 at the tender age of 17 he was imprisoned for treason by the Spanish. He subsequently spent most of his life exiled from his beloved Cuba, travelling throughout the Latin American continent and also spent some fourteen years living in New York. He returned to Cuba during the war of Independence against colonial masters, Spain, where he was killed in one of the earliest battles in the war.

This elegant anthology of Martí’s writings covers the full breadth of his work as a teacher, journalist, revolutionary and poet. It includes his political essays and writings on culture and journalism, letters and selections of his fine poetry.

During his exiled years, living in the United States, Martí wrote prolifically. His journalist articles covered a range of events, such as the New York memorial meeting for Karl Marx in 1883, the funeral of the Haymarket Martyrs in 1887, and the dedication of the Statue of Liberty in 1886. He was also at the forefront of protest at the racist treatment of blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans.

Alongside Simón Bolivar, José Martí is widely regarded as one of the most brilliant and impassioned advocates for social justice and the independence of what he termed “Nuestra América” (Our America). Readers of this anthology will find themselves awed by his literary genius and foresight into US-Latin American relations. Whilst fervently condemning of the brutality and corruption of the Spanish colonisers, Martí was increasing troubled by what he saw, correctly as the predatory ambitions of the United States, declaring just before his tragic death in 1895: “ I have lived inside the monster and I know its entrails; my sling is David’s “.

Martí  was a fierce Cuban patriot, but equally felt himself to be a citizen of all nations, as expressed in one of his poems, which has become known as the words of Cuba’s most popular song: “Guantánamera”,

                      I am a traveller to all parts

                     And a newcomer to none.

Upon the 100^th anniversary of Martí’s death, Fidel Castro summed up the man who has often been referred to as the “Apostle”: “Martí was a universal man with extraordinary ideas”.

Tim Turner