Cuba is a communist country located in the Caribbean. Its capital and largest city is Havana. The population is over 11 million, and the economy struggles with poverty. The official religion is Roman Catholicism. Cuba has been under an embargo by the United States for decades and faces issues with illegal immigration to the US and human/drug trafficking. The four works discuss themes of independence, censorship under communism, bicultural identities, and sexuality in Cuban society.

1. CUBA
LEAH NOLANDER
WILLIAM PUTMAN
JAMAL JAMIL
JOE LIPPERT
JONATHAN PONCE

2. Basic Facts about Cuba
 Capital: Havana
 Government State: Communist led by head of state Raul Castro
 Population: 11,087,330 (July 2011 est.)
 Economy: Cuba is a country full of poverty. The GDP per capita is
$9,900 (2010 est.) which is 109th in comparison to all other countries.
Some of their major industries include: sugar, petroleum, tobacco,
cement, pharmaceuticals
 Religion: 85% of the population is Roman Catholic. The remaining
15% consists of Protestants, Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses and more.
 International Disputes/Relations: Cuba is currently under an embargo
with the United States. Cuba is known for its extensive labor, sex, and
drug trafficking issues. Many illegal immigrants come from Cuba to the
United States by various methods. The United States has a naval base
in Guantanamo Bay on the island which they are leasing from Cuba.
However, Cuba cannot terminate the lease unless the United States
agrees or abandons the base.
Reference: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/cu.html

3. I Don’t Want Anyone Coming Around to Save Me
 By: Raul Rivero
 Born in 1945 in central Cuba
 Founded CubaPress – illegal and
independent news agency
 Considered political dissident:
can’t publish in Cuba
 Awarded World Press Freedom
Prize in 2004

4.  Form: Short poem
 Themes
 Leave me alone!
 Independence
  representative of relation between Cuba and Russia?
 “Cut off the oxygen now. I don’t want to suffer the agony
of the mask” (286)
 “I don’t want anyone coming around to save me. I want
to try and see if I am able to stand up all by myself” (287)

5. Project for a Commemorative Mural
 By: Anna Lidia Vega Serova
 Born in 1968 in Leningrad
 Spent early childhood in Cuba
 Moved back to USSR at age 9
 Returned to Cuba at age 21
 Author of many books and
novels

6.  Form: Snapshot Essay
 Reminiscent of Indian Education by Sherman Alexie
 Point of View: Changing
 Transitions between third and first person
 Themes
 Bicultural existence
 Home? capitalized
 USSR abandonment of Cuba
 Poverty
 Censorship

7. Symbolism and Imagery
 “The voracious rats that night after night dine
beneath the windows of your building will
indifferently devours the remains of your
unpublished poems scattered among banana peels,
pieces of broken bottles, used condoms, and sanitary
pads” (260)
 “your poems are naive. To show these poems is an
indecent and shameless act. He stepped on my
throat; grunts escaped from my mouth, he analyzed
them beneath a microscope and decreed: they are
naïve” (257)

8. Women of the Federation
 By: Francisco Garcia Gonzalez
 Born in Havana in 1965
 Earned degree in History from Havana University
 Won Cuba’s Hemingway Short Story Prize in 1999
 Background
 Communism
 Rationing of sanitary pads

9.  Form: Short Story
 Point of View:
 First Person
 “Young man struggling with attraction to two very different young
women, while coping with the ups and downs of daily life” (266)
 Themes
 Schizophrenic relationship with women
 Catholicism
 Sexual Frankness

10. Comprehensive Themes
 Sexual Frankness
 “I call her my yummy Pudge, my scrumptious pink Piggy, and watch how
her nostrils dilate. Because Pudge or my little Piggy are invocations,
triggers that unleash whirlwinds of desire. Followed by stiffening
nipples, pupils rolled back, uncontrollable gasping until the spasm of
release, feet kicking the air beneath or on top of me” (Women of the
Federation 267)
 So he shot the jet of sperm inside her fascinated vagina. Perhaps he
thought he would engender a beautiful, sublime being, something like an
extraterrestrial being” (Project for a Commemorative Mural 258)
 Sexual Infidelity
 Government Oppression
 Censorship
 Rationing