Almost all of
Negra’s chapters are headed by an epigraph generally made up of phrases taken from the
Dilogún (divinatory manual) of Cuban Santería.
1See Lise Segas’ article ‘Negra, de Wendy Guerra: ¿Una novela afrofeminista?’, Etudes Caribéennes, 4 December 2019.References to African culture are present throughout the novel, with fragments of scores, poems, song lyrics, letters, quotes, sayings and oracles of the Rule of Ocha. Throughout the novel, Nina vindicates her Afro-Cuban heritage and elements traditionally considered emblems of this culture, such as race, music and Santería. In doing so, she stands up to State powers: ‘Nobody is going to refine me. This is me, this is my colour and this is my soul. Brown sugar, descendant of a black woman in the country’.
2 Spanish original: ‘Nadie va a refinarme. Esto soy yo, éste es mi color y ésta es mi alma. Azúcar prieta, descendiente de una negra de nación’; Negra, p. 15. As in Lise Segas’ article, Nina proudly accepts her skin colour, which is approached in the Cuban language with multiple metaphors, such as ‘sugar’ and ‘coffee’, and street expressions, such as ‘negrón’ (‘big black’), ‘negro oscuro’ (‘dark black’), ‘negro teléfono’ (‘black telephone’), ‘negro feo’ (‘ugly black’), ‘negro lindo’ (‘beautiful black’) and ‘negro congo’ (‘Congolese black’).
3 Negra, p. 18. As Segas points out in her study on ‘Negra’, the importance of semantic resonances of the colour black in Cuban popular culture has been well captured by many and in particular by Zuleica Romay in her book
Elogio de la altea o las paradojas de la racialidad.
4 Zuleica Romay, Elogio de la altea o las paradojas de la racialidad (Havana: Casa de las Américas, 2012).In tirelessly vindicating the beauty of her race throughout the book, Nina presents a mythical portrait of her mother, whom she did not know and from whom, apparently, she inherited her beauty and African queen airs:
Her crown was the espendrum. She never stretched her hair to feel ‘advanced’ and […] it grew upward; how much cotton or little flower flew, was hooked on her head. A circular halo wooed her, crowning her mind. […] She did not have time to understand the difference. Her integrity was such that she never used colours when she spoke of a human being.
5 Spanish original: ‘Su corona era el espendrum. Nunca se estiró el pelo para sentirse ‘adelantada’ y, […] le crecía hacia arriba; cuanto algodón o florecita volaba, se enganchaba en su cabeza. Un halo circular la cortejaba, coronando su mente. […] Ella no tenía tiempo para entenderse con la diferencia. Su entereza era tal, que jamás usaba colores cuando hablaba de un ser humano’; Negra, p. 15.Nina indicates the moral superiority of her mother, who understood human existence in global terms. The woman did not have time to hold discussions on mundane issues, such as racial discrimination, which she believed should already have been resolved. Nina says that her mother’s hair did not follow the dictates of fashion. This was a distinctive element of her personality and a symbol of the struggle of Afro-feminists, including activist and academic Angela Davis, Nina’s mother’s girlfriend. The topic of hair as a distinctive issue returns a few pages later, when Nina tells Lu that she first felt different when her friends’ white grandmothers touched her hair. I agree with Segas that many African or Afro-descendant writers have used the ‘bad hair’ theme as a cause of distress and strength among African descendants.
Nina refers to her wild spirit as a runaway slave several times throughout the novel, despite the implications for considering herself a runaway slave: inferior to a master, oppressed and dispossessed of agency.
6 Rosalind C. Morris, Can the Subaltern Speak? Reflections on the History of an Idea (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), pp. 21–78. Yet, she takes pride in following her natural instincts, as declared when she returns to Cuba: ‘I had the spirit of a runaway slave’
7 Spanish original: ‘Yo tenía espíritu de cimarrón’; Negra, p. 162. and towards the end of the novel with a declaration of principles about her rebellious character:
I would run away again and again, sleep in the sun, disobey, dance until dawn, or jump the broom to get married against the master’s ideas, and all that despite the punishment, the laws, the place where I was born or the colour of my skin. I, in another life, in this one and the one that will come, always was and always will be a runaway slave.
8 Spanish original: ‘Yo me escaparía una y otra vez, me dormiría al sol, desobedecería, bailaría hasta el amanecer o saltaría la escoba para casarme en contra de las ideas del amo, y todo eso a pesar del castigo, las leyes, el lugar donde nací o el color de mi piel. Yo, en otra vida, en ésta y en la que venga, siempre fui y siempre seré cimarrona’; Negra, pp. 283–84.In this quote, Nina refers us to the testimonial novel
Biografía de un cimarrón (1966) by Miguel Barnet, which narrates the life of Esteban Montejo, the last Cuban fugitive slave.
9 Miguel Barnet, Biografía de un cimarrón (Havana: Academia de Ciencias de Cuba, 1966).Nina’s fugitive slavery condition also manifests in her rejection of the white supremacist social policies and rules in Cuba and France. I have said that Nina suffers racism at different levels in Cuba, but her boyfriend Jorge reproduces the white elite’s contempt for black individuals. However, the scene is somewhat predictable. His cruel response to Nina’s pregnancy and suggestion that they should get married resumes the racist ideology well: ‘I am white and well born, as my grandmother would say. Forget about accepting a black woman, good or bad, in my family. No braids are combed here’.
10 Spanish original: ‘Yo soy blanco y bien nacido, como diría mi abuela. Olvídate de que acepten a una negra, buena o mala, en mi familia. Aquí no se peinan trencitas’; Negra, p. 28. He shows how the white elite’s contempt for black people in colonial times manifests in Cuba in present times. For example, Jorge launches a veiled accusation at Nina of her engaging in prostitution with Europeans as the only way out for her as a young and beautiful Cuban woman: ‘Keep modelling, marry a Nordic and go represent us abroad, put the exotic pennant high up. But don’t believe the story, don’t be naive, we’ll never be the same here’.
11 Spanish original: ‘Sigue modelando, cásate con un nórdico y ve a representarnos al extranjero, pon el banderín exótico bien en alto. Pero no te creas el cuento, no seas ingenua, aquí no seremos iguales nunca’; Negra, p. 29. For Jorge, Nina is (and always has been) an exotic sexual object. For Nina, as he understands it, Jorge is a symbol of hope for a better life outside Cuba. Nina’s escapism and independent nature save her from him for a while. Jorge, on his part, develops an intense hatred for Nina due to his inability to control her. In this way, Jorge presents racism in Cuba as a chronic issue that is sustained by political immobility that obscures the possibility for change.
In
Negra, racial discrimination intertwines with class discrimination in the urban sphere. Nina lives with her grandmother, Cuca Gándara, in a crowded and noisy solar in Old Havana, where there is no privacy. The
solares were formerly sumptuous mansions where marquises, counts, rich landowners and merchants lived. At the beginning of the revolution, these constructions were segmented into small apartments called
solares or
corredores. There, Jorge shouts ‘black’ while making love in Nina’s bedroom. Jorge lives in the old district of Siboney, one of the most elegant neighbourhoods in Havana. He hides Nina and asks her to lower her voice so that his family does not notice her. Nina says: ‘During these five years, nobody has seen my face. I don’t know them, they don’t know me’.
12 Spanish original: ‘Durante estos cinco años, nadie me ha visto la cara. No los conozco, no me conocen’; Negra, p. 25. Nina is a stranger in the ‘exclusive white neighbourhood’ of Siboney but not in the police station: a place full of other subalterns, such as cross-dressers and prostitutes, all ‘mixed race or black’.
13 Spanish original: ‘mulatto o negra’; Negra, pp. 32–33. See Segas’ ‘Negra’. When Cuca Gándara arrives, she shouts ‘Racists, racists’ and threatens to call the police. Nina tries to calm her down by ironically explaining: ‘Grandma, this is the police’,
14 Spanish original: ‘Abuela, que ya esto es la policía’; Negra, p. 33. thus indicating that racism is institutional. Ironically, they must wait for Jorge to confirm Nina’s version of events, to which she refers ironically: ‘It is always white who saves black, even in my movie’.
15 Spanish original: ‘Siempre es el blanco el que salva a la negra, hasta en mi película’; Negra, p. 33. The fact that it is a man who must help Nina in this situation refers us to the
machista ideology that Nina must confront, as we shall see later in this chapter.
Institutional racism also manifests during Nina’s stay in the Escambray Mountains, where the official permit to start the business is granted to Catalina, Jorge’s grandmother. This anticipates Nina’s dramatic end as one of those ‘black women who die at the end of American films’.
16 Spanish original: ‘negritas que son asesinada al final de una película estadounidense’; Negra, p. 187. Jorge travels to the Escambray Mountains, burns the factory and humiliates Nina: ‘Jorge got on top and forced me to open my mouth to make me swallow his warm urine stream’.
17 Spanish original: ‘Jorge se me encimó y me forzó a abrir la boca para hacerme tragar su chorro de orine cálido’; Negra, p. 315. Nina becomes a witness to her own death, which causes her to return to her dead mother: ‘I go back, I snuggle, I go back to being a piece of her. Return to the egg, to the origin of the sacred maternal river that runs and flows forever’.
18 Spanish original: ‘Vuelvo, me acurruco, regreso a ser un pedazo de ella. Regreso al huevo, al origen del sagrado río materno que transcurre y fluye por siempre’; Negra, p. 316. Nina’s death silences her voice in her own country.
In Marseille, Nina and Lu are stigmatised due to their racial and ethnic backgrounds, showing that racism is an ongoing issue in apparently more advanced societies. As in Havana, Nina and Lu (Lu is half-French and half-Chinese) feel they are ‘two Cuban refugees with no right to object. We are all the same, but some more than others’.
19 Spanish original: ‘dos cubanas recogidas no tienen derecho a poner objeciones. Todos somos iguales, pero unos son más iguales que otros’; Negra, p. 147. Lu and Nina rebel against the restricted possibilities of social ascent for poor and working-class people in the stratified French society. For example, when Lu and Nina are walking with a Moroccan friend, a man spits on the ground in disgust, and the Moroccan friend begins to argue with him. However, they end up again at the police station because they did not have their documents. Nina concludes: ‘it seems that […] prison and danger will always be with me: wherever I go I will go through the police, and I will be on the edge of danger’.
20 Spanish original: ‘parece que […] la cárcel y el peligro siempre me acompañarán: vaya a donde vaya pasaré por la policía, y estaré al filo del peligro’; Negra, p. 148. While both Cuba and France advocate the myth of equality, they reproduce similar dynamics of social exclusion and racial inequality. The French neglect the young women because of their racial backgrounds: ‘Well, I don’t exist here […] the black attaché of Havana. For an old woman, without ancestry or a European passport, it is better to remain a martyr than to become a hero without a name’.
21 Spanish original: ‘Pues yo aquí no existo, […] la negra agregada de la Habana. Vieja, sin abolengo ni pasaporte europeo, mejor quedarse mártir que convertirse en una heroína sin nombre’; Negra, p. 151. Nina therefore presents the alternative of exile as part of a process through which individuals lose their identities.
These two events do not appear in the official stories of the countries. In fact, when Nina and Lu complain to Philippe and his French girlfriend Aida about it, Aida denies it and makes a veiled criticism of their aspirations in France:
I think you feel and see racism where there is none. I am a woman who had to compete, being French, with thousands of immigrants to obtain a scholarship and study in my own country, I had to impose myself and be what I am. France is not a racist country. You have a place but it will be little by little.
22 Spanish original: ‘Creo que ustedes sienten y ven el racismo donde no lo hay. Yo soy una mujer que tuve que competir, siendo francesa, con miles de emigrantes para obtener una beca y estudiar en mi propio país, tuve que imponerme y ser lo que soy. Francia no es un país racista. Ustedes tienen un lugar pero será de a poco’; Negra, p. 143.Nina, on her side, distinguishes between three different Frances: ‘the touristy, the crude one and the one accepted by double standards. If they admitted that, their charitable facade would collapse’.
23 Spanish original: ‘la turística, la cruda y la aceptada por la doble moral. Si ellos admitían eso, se les derrumbaba aquel paripé caritativo’; Negra, at p. 151. Nina highlights French double standards and false solidarity with the political causes of other countries, such as Cuba. As Segas points out in ‘Negra’, Guerra reminds us of the initial support given to the revolution by renowned European intellectuals, such as Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, André Breton and Le Corbusier, whom she calls the ‘izquierda sucrée’ (‘sugary left’): those who ‘went to Cuba to sweeten the lump of sugar’.
24 Spanish original: ‘fueron a Cuba a endulzarse con el terrón de azúcar’; Negra, p. 114. This issue has long been raised by Cuban dissidents. For example, Reinaldo Arenas also faced censorship in exile from what he called the ‘izquierda festiva’ (‘festive left’), ‘izquierda feliz’ (‘happy left’) and ‘turistas del comunismo’ (‘tourists of communism’).
25 Reinaldo Arenas, Necesidad de libertad: grito luego existo (Argentina: Kosmos, 1986), p. 46. Nina points out that these intellectuals abandoned the ‘Cuban cause’ as soon as they started to disagree with the government. Such is the case with Philippe, who is a white anthropologist and an old friend of Nina’s mother.
Philippe embodies the defeated European left, living a bohemian life with their economic situation resolved: ‘I really don’t fight anymore, I’ve given up, I’ve closed the subject, Nina. I hardly see any of my friends from that time, I’ve disconnected from the games, I’m a disenchanted loner’.
26 Spanish original: ‘Yo, la verdad, ya no lucho, me he rendido, cerré el tema, Nina. No veo casi a ninguno de mis amigos de ese tiempo, me desconecté de los partidos, soy un desencantado solitario’; Negra, p. 115. Philippe falls in love with Nina, as he did before with Nina’s mother, and follows her to Cuba.
Therefore, in France, Nina becomes a caricature of herself – a young and beautiful black Cuban, impulsive and exotic, often misidentified as a sex worker. Her lack of foresight and frankness mutes her voice for the white, middle-class and rational French. This deeply outrages her and makes her return to Cuba. Nina explains to Philippe:
I’m going back, here they treat me like a slave, and if I’m going to be a slave and if I’m going to go to war, damn, let it be in Cuba, not here, where I am a shitty black woman, with no right to anything, with nothing of mine to fight for.
27 Spanish original: ‘voy a regresar, aquí me tratan como a una esclava, y si voy a ser esclava y si me voy a poner a guerrear, coño, que sea en Cuba, no aquí, donde soy una negra de mierda, sin derecho a nada, sin nada mío por lo que luchar’; Negra, p. 156.She wishes to avoid becoming a caricature of the exiled Cuban. Nina returns to Cuba, guided by her own survival instinct and without a pre-established plan. In the end, it is revealed that the novel is narrated by Lu, who is investigating migrants in France for her doctoral thesis. This rhetorical dynamic is twofold in
Negra. Guerra is a white writer living in an upscale neighbourhood by Cuban standards who has written the story of a young Afro-Cuban woman who lives a chaotic life, driven primarily by her own will and intuition. Throughout the novel, the reader has the impression that Nina is the narrator of her own story, as she complains that ‘history has very seldom been told by us blacks’.
28 Spanish original: ‘la historia muy pocas veces ha sido contada por nosotros los negros’; Negra, p. 283. Yet, to the reader’s surprise, it is revealed at the end that the narrator is her friend Lu, half-white and half-Chinese. By making Lu the narrator of this story, Guerra questions the ability of Nina to speak for herself: ‘I don’t know, Nina, you talk like a white woman defending blacks. I don’t know if they will believe me when I say that I did this interview with a black girl’.
29 Spanish original: ‘No sé, Nina, es que hablas como una blanca defendiendo a los negros. No sé si me creerán cuando cuente que esta entrevista se la hice a una negrita’; Negra, p. 48. It seems that only the descendants of Europeans are able to tell the unofficial story of racial discrimination and violence against women, who endure the control of macho men in a patriarchal and military system, as we shall see next.