Publications

Her critical work has appeared in CLC Web: Comparative Literature & Culture, Zora Neale Hurston Forum, the ground-breaking collection, Health Travels: Cuban Health(care), On and Off the Island, and,more recently,in the edited volume Un pueblo disperso: Dimensiones sociales y culturales de la diáspora cubana. Her article “Call Him Ismael: José Martí’s Abdala (1869), Ismaelillo (1881), and ‘The Moors in Spain’ (1893),” is currently under review at Cuban Studies Journal.

Her research has been funded by the Sally Casanova Graduate Research Grant, Cuban Heritage Collection Doctoral Fellowship, the Latin American Studies Association (UCLA), and the UC-CUBA Academic Initiative, among others.

The continued support of her research and related projects has allowed her to complete extended archival research at the Biblioteca Nacional José Martí, in Havana, Cuba, the Cuban Heritage Collection, at the University of Miami, Archives of the Algerian War 1954-1962 at the Paris Préfecture de Police, and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, as well as travel to the Caribbean, Latin America, Europe, and North Africa.

Books

In Progress

Let Us Be Moors: Arab & Islamic Presence in Cuban Literature & Culture from the 1830s to the Present. (Book manuscript)

In Progress

LatinArabia: The Latin Arab-America Reader. Eds. Mónica Ayala-Martínez and Susannah Rodríguez Drissi. See “Call for Papers” here.

Translations

“Young Cuban Cinema Out of the Shadows.” Maria Nela Lebeque Hay. Cuba Counterpoints (May 1)

“The Archive’s Ashes.” Rafael Rojas. Translated into English with Ariana Hernández Reguant. Cuba Counterpoints (September 1)

“To Kill a Pope in La Habana.” English translation of short fiction by Cuban writer and photographer Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo. Cuba Counterpoints (August 2016)

English translation of interview with Gustavo Arcos Fernández-Britto, third interviewee in “Public Intellectual Future” series. Arcos Fernández-Britto is a film studies professor at the Arts University (formerly known as Instituto Superior de Arte or I.S.A.), in Havana. Cuba Counterpoints (June 2015)

Accepted

English translation and critical introduction of Lydia Cabrera’s Porque … Cuentos de Cuba. Because… New Tales from Afro-Cuba, with Critical Introduction. University Press of Florida.

Articles

Forthcoming

“Call Him Ismael: Martí’s Oriente and the Arab World.” Special Issue: The Arab Presence in Latin American Literature. Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas. (peer edited)

Published

“The Quest for Body and Voice in Assia Djebar’s Vaste est la prison,” 7.3 (September 2005) of CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture. (peer-edited)

“Universal Harmony and the Trickster in Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men and Lydia Cabrera’s Cuentos negros de Cuba,” The Zora Neale Hurston Forum—Official Publication of the Zora Neale Hurston Society, December 2004. (peer-edited)

Book Chapters

“Reading Abdala in the Arab Spring.” Reading Cuba–Discurso literary y geografía transcultural. Ed. Alberto Sosa Cabanas (Aduana Vieja, 2018).

Please order a copy for your library: Click here.

“Cuban à l’Arab: Exile and “lo cubano” in Abilio Estévez’s Los palacios distantes and Jesús Díaz’s “El pianista árabe” in peer-edited volume The Cuban Diaspora: A Dispersed People. Ed. Jorge Duany (Editorial Aduana Vieja, 2014).

Please order a copy for your library: Click here.

“Eating in Cuban: The Cuban Cena in Literature and Film” (Book Chapter) in peer-edited volume Health Travels: Cuban Health(care), On and Off the Island (UC Medical Humanities Press, 2013).

Please order a copy for your library: Click here.

Encyclopedia Entries

“Afrocubanismo.” Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism. Ed. Stephen Ross. Routledge Press.

“José Martí.” Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism. Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism. Ed. Stephen Ross. Routledge Press.

Fiction

Until We’re Fish, a novel, Finalist in the Veliz Books’ 2018-2019 Fiction Publication.

Letters from Camus (in progress)

Plays & Musical Theatre

Houses Without Walls, a short play published by La Casita Grande Press, December 2017.

Houses Without Walls premiered at Hollywood Fringe Festival, June 7-24, 2018. Read an excerpt here. See more, including awards, here.

Nocturno, a musical. (Development stage)

Short Fiction & Creative Non-fiction

“Winter in Havana.” (Forthcoming)

“Good Neighbors.” (Forthcoming)

“Viva Cuba Pigeon.” Cuba Counterpoints (December 2016)

“The Hair, Like Nadia Comaneci’s.” Cuba Counterpoints (August 2016)

Exclusive interview. The Romania Journal (August 2016) I was interviewed by The Romania Journal (Bucharest, Romania) as a result of the publication of “The Hair, Like Nadia Comaneci.” To read the interview, which includes a reflection about writing and the connection between autobiography and fiction, as well as links between Romania and Cuba in the 1970s and 1980s, click here.

“Even You, Miami.” Saw Palm, Issue 10 (Spring 2016)

Please order a copy for your library: Click here

“The Man Who Loved Fish.” Acentos Review (November 2015)

“Another Secret Agent.” Cuba Counterpoints (September 2015)

“La ventana.” La Celestina. (May 2002) (Available soon)

Essays, Reviews, & Interviews

“Writing Cuba: Interview with Leonardo Padura.” Los Angeles Review of Books (December 2018)

“A Coming of Age for Cuban American Literature.” Cuba Counterpoints (December 2015)

“Little Wrestlers.” Raising Mothers (September 2015)

“The Year I Turn SciFi.” Cuba Counterpoints (August 2015)

“Reading Enid Blyton in Bauta.” Cuba Counterpoints (July 2015)

“On Alejandro Zambra’s My Documents.” Literal Magazine (July 2015)