A bilingual edition of contemporary writing from Cuba
The Star-Spangled Brand
Poetry by Marcelo Morales
Translation and commentary by Kristin Dykstra
The Star-Spangled Brand is a collection of new prose poetry tracking a Havana that changes … Unless it does not.
Marcelo Morales is a Chris Marker of Cuba. His groundbreaking prose poetry unfolds like film, from his double nation-state consciousness—Cuba and the US. It is saturated with fast-paced montage of snap-shot historical memory and the reality of economic-embargoed utopia. His “two nation-states” vision across the ocean plays the role of a foreigner in Florida, documenting and translating the paradise of gun violence and xenophobia. The Star-Spangled Brand in Kristin Dykstra’s brilliant translation is unforgettable and vital. It will make you feel what Morales feels: “the power of two nation-states on the back of my neck.” —Don Mee Choi, author of Mirror Nation
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The Star-Spangled Brand
Related
The Star-Spangled Brand made “The Watchlist: January 2025” at Words Without Borders.
Interview: Marcelo Morales. BOMB online (2017).
“Mahh-racas,” at Intermedium (commentary series for Jacket2, University of Pennsylvania)
The World as Presence/El mundo como ser, by Marcelo Morales. Tr. & int. Kristin Dykstra. The University of Alabama Press, 2016.