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El Monte's New Itineraries

Afrodiasporic Spirituality in the Contemporary Caribbean

Edited by Alberto Sosa-Cabanas

Paperback

$39.95

Hardback

$120.00

eBook (ePub)

$39.95

Quantity

Price:: $39.95
ISBN:: 9781978846258
Published:: Apr 14, 2026

Release Date:: 14th April 2026
Publisher:: Rutgers University Press
Imprint:: Rutgers University Press
Series:: Critical Caribbean Studies
Pages:: 216

Description
Praise
Contents
Authors

El Monte's New Itineraries is the first book fully devoted to the study of Cuban author and ethnographer Lydia Cabrera’s El Monte (1954), one of the most influential books in Caribbean cultural history. Highly referenced, if understudied, El Monte is a comprehensive work that intertwines ethnobotany, popular orality, and Afro-Cuban traditions. Its pages have enjoyed a transnational influence, enriching domains such as ethnography, politics, theater, and even science fiction literature in the Caribbean, and the knowledge contained in it lies at the heart of Afrodiasporic spirituality and ethnomedicinal practices across Hispanic Caribbean cultures and beyond.

“Guide, manual, labyrinth, intricate thicket of reality and fantasy, a work of high literary modernism, scholarly treatise, or an example of the ‘marvelous real’? Lydia Cabrera's El Monte is a magical, poetic, and idiosyncratic rendering of Afro-Cuban religious beliefs and practices. We are fortunate to have a collection of essays that approach this baffling and charming book from different perspectives and disciplines: anthropology, ethnobotany, the visual arts, literature, history, queerness, and ecology. These essays reveal that El Monte is more than a text, it is a journey filled with new beginnings."
- Alan West-Durán, author of Afro-Cuban Religions and the Arts: A Dog Has Four Legs But Takes One Path

"Vibrant, daring, and deeply grounded, this book reimagines Lydia Cabrera’s work for our time. Moving across literature, ethnography, and visual culture, the essays uncover how Cabrera’s El Monte continues to breathe through the Caribbean’s art, spirituality, and politics. This collection proves that Cabrera’s forest of symbols is still very much alive and more relevant than ever."
- Mabel Cuesta, associate professor, University of Houston

Introduction: El Monte, There and Back Again
Alberto Sosa-Cabanas
PART I: Ethnography, Literary Voices and Construction of the Caribbean Space
1. El Monte au jour d’hui
Stephan Palmié
2. Lydia Cabrera's El Monte: Environment, History and Culture
Beatriz Rivera-Barnes
3. Lost in El Monte
Emily A. Maguire
4. Monte, Mangrove, and Migration: Disrupting Caribbean Borders in Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro's Los documentados
Joshua Deckman
PART II: El Monte´s Aesthetics Dimensions: Approaches and Crossovers
5. El Monte in Images: Subjects, Spaces, Objects, and Transcultural Interplay
Lázara Menéndez
6. Wifredo Lam and The Jungle: The Prodigal Son's Return to El Monte
Suset Sánchez
7. Queerness, Death, and Spiritualism in Lydia Cabrera and Belkis Ayón
Jossianna Arroyo
PART III: El Monte, Black Bodies and Afro Caribbean Spiritualities
8. Ifá Margination in El Monte: Focus on a blind spot (and some hypothesis)
Erwan Dianteill
9. Asé Omó Osayín, Ewé Ayé: Cabrera’s Worldmaking in and through El Monte
Martin Tsang
10. Queer Nature: Colonial Uncanny and the Black Supernatural in Lydia Cabrera´s El Monte
Juan Esteban Plaza
Acknowledgments
Notes on Contributors
Index

ALBERTO SOSA-CABANAS is an assistant professor in the Department of English and Modern Languages at Hampton University. His academic work on the intersections between racism and cultural production has received numerous awards and recognitions, including fellowship support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice (ISGRJ), the Tinker Foundation, and the Cuban Research Institute (FIU). His essays can be found in the journals Revista Iberoamericana, Cuban Studies, and Decimonónica. He is the editor of the volume Reading Cuba, Discurso Literario y Geografía Transcultural (Valencia, Aduana Vieja, 2018).