resources. He’ll ask friends in Amster-
dam for sources; he’s not just sitting
there googling.”
Kushner has translated other writ-
ers like Guillermo Rosales, Norberto
Fuentes, and Gonçalo Tavares as well
as Padura, and she’s come to the exas-
perating realization that the greatest
challenge in translating Cuba is crash-
ing up against Cuba’s surface and push-
ing beyond what people know, to the
messier realities of the island. Pushing
also beyond the preconceived notions
of American publishers. “I’m trying
so hard,” she says, “not to fetishize the
American imagination of what Cuba
is and should be. As a translator, it’s a
critical function to understand what’s going on in Cuba
today, instead of feeding the idea of what it should be.”
She’s, in essence, up against how to sell the true Cuba
to Americans “when there’s not something in existence
that is similar, just [the fetishized version of Cuba].”
Dick Cluster, who translates writers like Aida Bahr, adds
that he also “wanted to complicate Americans’ views of
Cuba, whether right, left, or center, and translating con-
temporary Cuban literature is a good way to do that.”
Enter the book Kushner is
currently working on, The Black
Cathedral, by Marcial Gala, set for
publication by FSG in 2020. “This is
definitely not something you see in
the American press,” Kushner says.
First, it doesn’t take place in Havana;
it takes place in a marginal neighbor-
hood in Cienfuegos. It does not have
any stereotypical Cuban characters,
and it’s about a man who receives a
mission from God to build a temple
like none Cuba has seen. “I’m really a
little nervous and excited at the same
time,” says Kushner.
In addition, it’s a character-driv-
en book, which is probably what
Kushner is most drawn to and what
makes it, no matter what, universal.
As a reader and translator, Kushner
is interested in what she calls the
human novel. “Making sense of our
different human emotions, whether
that be political or the death of someone close to you or
a radical life change, whatever that might be.... Gettinginto someone else’s head and another point of view for
two hundred pages—there’s so much to learn from that,”
she says.
Kushner, like Aparicio, is Cuban (of Cuban descent
in her case), so she knows innately the complex points
of view Cuba encompasses—they’ve been passed on
throughout the years, from one family member to the
next. But you don’t have to be Cuban to understand
that Cuba is intricate. Kristin Dykstra, who has been
translating Cuban literature for over a decade and a half,
comes at Cuba from the outside but with an extremely
keen eye, and she arrives at a similar conclusion to
Kushner’s: Cuba is “messy, pushed around by a slew of
Cuban voices and those of a couple of translators too,”
says Dykstra.
Born in Ohio, Dykstra grew up on a farm road where
there were only two “English families”; the rest were
Amish. “In retrospect, I realize that I grew up in a place
with a constant perception gap.” The ability to navigate
this gap has helped her navigate Cuba. Later, in graduate
school, a professor introduced her to the poetry of Reina
María Rodríguez, whom Dykstra would eventually
come to translate. The two have been working together
ever since the late 1990s, and you can see the closeness,
at least to the language, in Dykstra’s nuanced yet utterly
faithful rhythms. They are a song to read.
“I enter Reina’s work,” says Dyk-
stra, “as something that’s newly pre-
senting itself to me. For Reina, it’s
already receding in her wake. We
sort of shout back and forth across
that distance. It’s challenging, but
for me, the process becomes fun
because it’s so weird. Reina is a rest-
less, prolific thinker and creator with
her own rhythm.”
Dykstra is herself prolific, too.
When she’s not translating Rodrí-
guez, she is working on other Cuban
writers, consistently visiting the
island as well as other places the
world takes Cubans. “I once met a
Cuban poet in Madrid to finish a
magazine publication,” she says. For
her, it’s a matter of ethics, to actu-
ally visit the island, the places Cuban
writers feel through and see; live. “I
learn unexpected things, and while I
can do some of that work on email,
being there in person is irreplaceable. You just can’t plan
for someone pointing to the exact angle from whichVanessa Garcia is a
multidisciplinary writer.
Her play Amparo is
currently running in
Miami. Her debut
novel, White Light,
was one of NPRs
Best Books of 2015.
Most recently, she
was a Sesame Street
Writer’s Room Fellow
and is currently a WP
Theatre Lab fellow as
well as a professor
of writing at SCAD
(Savannah College of
Art and Design).
ESSAY TRANSLATING CUBA IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURYDick Cluster
also “wanted
to complicate
Americans’ views
of Cuba, whether
right, left, or center,
and translating
contemporary Cuban
literature is a good
way to do that.”For Kristin Dykstra,
it’s a matter of ethics,
to actually visit the
island, the places
Cuban writers feel
through and see, live.GARCIA PHOTO: DEXTER FLETCHER34 W LT SUMMER 2019