The Great Zoo: A Bilingual Edition
Translated by Aaron Coleman
A fantastical collection of poems by revolutionary Afro-Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén presented in a Spanish-English bilingual edition.
Born in Cuba to parents of African and European ancestry, Nicolás Guillén worked in printing presses and studied law before moving into Havana’s literary scene. A virtuosic maker and breaker of forms, Guillén rose to fame by transforming a popular form of Cuban music into poetry that called attention to the experience of Afro-Cuban people, and he continued to interweave his artistic and political commitments as he traveled the world.
Originally published in Spanish in 1967, The Great Zoo is a humorous and biting collection of poems that presents a fantastical bestiary of ideas, social concerns, landscapes, phenomena, and more. The “animals” on view in this menagerie include the Mississippi and Amazon Rivers, clouds from different countries, a singing guitar, a temperamental atomic bomb, blue-pelted police, a hurricane, the KKK, and the North Star, among many others.
Translated by Aaron Coleman with a keen understanding of the contexts of colonial racialization, oppression, and exoticism, this bilingual edition stands as a testament to Guillén’s carnivalesque vision.
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Book Dimensions: 16.51 cm, 0.61 cm, 24.13 cm
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