Nancy Morejón as a Cultural and Gender Mediator
Nancy Morejón as a Cultural and Gender Mediator
GABRIELA SUÁREZ Undergratuated Student
Quality Leadership University
I am not more of a black person than a woman; I am not more of a woman than a Cuban; I am not more of a black person than a Cuban.
I am a brief combustion of those factors.— Nancy Morejon
Culture and gender are seen as both expressions and characteristics of certain groups and societies; both of these concepts could easily be linked when studying behavior and identity influence in Literature. The Cuban Revolution of 1959 paved the way for numerous Cuban writers in matter of societal, political and educational matters. These Cuban writers benefited from the great opportunities of education and the new laws addressing discrimination and gender status and began to develop a mindset and literature abundant in Afro Cuban tradition, gender empowerment and a nationalist tone. An example of these offsprings of the revolution is the renowned poet, essayist, and translator Nancy Morejon. She as a writer could address topics from a direct point of view coming from her experience living as an Afro Cuban woman, making her a mediator and spokesperson of the Afro Cuban identity and also of the Cuban woman, during the Post-Revolution Cuba and until the present day.
Nicolas Guillen, fellow writer and mentor of Nancy Morejon, once stated that Nancy’ s literature was“ as black as her skin”, expressing her devotion to her Afro Cuban identity. What makes Nancy a beacon of light within the Afro Cuban literature is the simplicity and oneness of her person and her work, which is very easy to identify with, while also causing an impact on the reader. Whether it’ s in her poems, essays or other scripts, Nancy Morejon can easily convey the concept of race and gender within the Cuban environment, which makes her a solid writer of diverse topics. An example of this is the poem " Mujer Negra ", first published in 1975, after a dream that Nancy had about a woman that stared at her in her sleep begging for freedom, which intrigued her until she found the source for it, as Nancy stated in her Poetics analysis“ la negra regresó y me dictó el poema”( which translates as“ the black woman came back and dictated the poem to me”. In " Mujer Negra ", Nancy wrote about the experience of the slave trade as a woman.
This poem can be interpreted as the direct experience of an African woman coming to the new world, while experiencing the horrors of slavery and possible assault, but there is also the undertone of black identity when she speaks of her ancestry and her native language. In this poem the line“ acaso no he olvidado ni mi costa perdí a mi lengua ancestral”( translated as“ perhaps I have neither forgotten nor lost my coast to my ancestral language”) highlights the theme in her poem, where she battled with its direction because " Mujer Negra " wasn’ t only about the sole experience of that woman but it was also intertwined with the experience of Nancy in the Cuba of the 70s( Morejon 1995).
A complement for " Mujer Negra " is the poem " Amo a Mi Amo ", which portrays the other side of the coin, being more introspective and analytical of the female mind. Both of these poems are important to Nancy as she stated in an interview done by BOMB Magazine; because " Mujer Negra " poses as a global and epic account of slavery written almost in a dreamlike state and " Amo a Mi Amo " brings the opposite sense, analyzing the internal struggle of women as slaves. What makes these poems relevant not only in the black community
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