Growing Up with Carpentier

doi:10.1017/9781009554824.031

Chapter 30 - Growing Up with Carpentier

from Part VI - Carpentier for Debate

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2026

Antonio José Ponte and

Giovanni Molina Rosario

Edited by

Anke Birkenmaier

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Anke Birkenmaier: Affiliation:
Indiana University

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Summary

This essay details how the author’s vocation as a writer and reader was awakened by the admiration he felt in his youth for Alejo Carpentier’s literature. That same admiration led to discovering Carpentier’s alienation from the Cuban regime, his role as a censor and a censored individual, and his tendency to adapt what he wrote to fit the ideological demands of the moment. Even though the political environment ended up conditioning readings of Carpentier, the author of this essay describes how he learned to strike a balance between admiration and criticism, acknowledging Carpentier’s complexity as a literary figure.

Keywords

Alejo Carpentier Cuban Revolution censorship self-censorship José Lezama Lima propaganda Centro Alejo Carpentier socialist realism

Information

Type: Chapter
Information: Alejo Carpentier in Context , pp. 358 - 368
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009554824.031 [Opens in a new window]
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2026

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References

Works Cited

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Carpentier, Alejo The Harp and the Shadow. Translated by Thomas Christensen and Carol Christensen, Mercury House, 1990.Google Scholar

Carpentier, Alejo The Kingdom of This World. Translated by Pablo Medina, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017.Google Scholar

Carpentier, Alejo The Lost Steps. Translated by Adrian Nathan West, Penguin, 2023.Google Scholar

Chao, Ramón. Palabras en el tiempo de Alejo Carpentier. Argos Vergara S. A., 1984.Google Scholar

Hemingway, Ernest. The Old Man and the Sea. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1952.Google Scholar

Proust, Marcel. Un amor de Swan. Prologue by Virgilio Piñera, Editorial Nacional de Cuba, 1964.Google Scholar

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