Cuban Literature in Translation: Fina García Marruz’s Créditos de Charlot

Begun as the accompaniment to a Spanish-English translation project of Cuban poet Josefina García Marruz’s 1990 collection Créditos de Charlot [Thanks to Charlie], my capstone research investigates the relationship between historical context and the process of literary translation both on the level of the original work and that of the translated work. Specifically, I look at how this particular poetry collection—an homage to film star Charlie Chaplin—can serve as an entry point into Cuban literature’s representation of the changing politics of the second half of the 20th century there as well as what implications translating a work such as this holds for a U.S. audience. This project also seeks to better understand how dynamics in the long history of Cuban-U.S. relations manifest in what literature from Cuba is published in translation in the U.S.