The OS Crosses Borders :: Field Notes by Margaret Randall
In March 2018 The Operating System breached a border the U.S. government has tried to keep closed for sixty years. Barbara Byers, Gregory Randall and I (Margaret Randall) attended the Matanzas Book Fair, provincial continuation of Havana’s yearly book fair that takes place in February. [Ed: “Feria Internacional del Libro de La Habana,” running annually since 1982.] Following the magna event in Cuba’s capital city, the fair moves east, exciting book lovers in one province after another with a mix of the books that have made their appearance nationally during the preceding year and foreign titles, all in an intensely local event.
This year, The Operating System was present in several ways. I brought the bilingual edition of Viaje de Regreso / Return Trip by Cuban poet Israel Domínguez and just out from the OS. Cuba’s Ediciones Aldabón published a Spanish edition of Gregory’s To Have Been There Then, his memoir of growing up in Cuba which the OS put out in January of 2017. And Barbara, whose art appeared on the covers of the 2017 chapbook series, had an exhibition of her asemic writing journals; the 16 notebooks were affixed to the museum wall in such a way that the public could thumb through them, an experience people really seemed to appreciate. Barbara’s show also included the original drawings for my Little Charlie Lindbergh and Other Poems, just released by Ediciones Matanzas as Del pequeño Charlie Lindbergh y otros poemas. And Barbara funded and judged the first in a yearly contest for young book designers hosted by Matanzas’ famous handmade book cooperative, Vigía.
Cuba’s Minister of Culture, Abel Prieto, attended Gregory’s book launch in Matanzas. A pretty amazing offshoot of that was his invitation to Gregory and me to come to the Ministry in Havana a few days later and hold a conversation with about 100 cultural workers. [Ed: See more pictures and hear an audio clip in Spanish from Cuban radio station CGMW here.] It was clear that Abel had read Gregory’s book from cover to cover; he mentioned too many details for us to doubt that. When I asked him how he’d had time, he said he’d read it in the car, traveling to the book fair in the province of Camagüey!
Abel has been one of the country’s high-ranking leadership who has done more than anyone else more in recent years to remedy periods of censorship and make sure they don’t happen again. A writer himself, his is a profound and creative intelligence. The event at the Ministry was illuminating in all sorts of ways. We talked about Gregory’s book, but also about the role of creative people in designing and sustaining a new society. The cultural workers (most seemed to be in their late thirties) asked complex questions. Cuba suffers from all sorts of problems — from chronic underdevelopment to continued U.S. assault and a precarious economy. But in its support for the arts it is way ahead of the United States — with books on average costing the equivalent of 50 cents.
The Operating System has always had as one of its goals that of making community. In March it made community for a public that rarely has access to U.S. literature.
Ed: another editorial about Margaret’s visit to the annual Book Festival appears here. (Spanish)
Margaret Randall (New York, 1936) is a poet, essayist, oral historian, translator, photographer and social activist. She lived in Latin America for 23 years (in Mexico, Cuba, and Nicaragua). From 1962 to 1969 she and Mexican poet Sergio Mondragón co-edited EL CORNO EMPLUMADO / THE PLUMED HORN, a bilingual literary quarterly that published some of the best new work of the sixties. When she came home in 1984, the government ordered her deported because it found some of her writing to be “against the good order and happiness of the United States”. With the support of many writers and others, she won her case in 1989. Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, she taught at several universities. Randall’s most recent poetry titles include CHE ON MY MIND, HAYDEE SANTAMARIA, CUBAN REVOLUTIONARY: SHE LED BY TRANSGRESSION, THE MORNING AFTER: POETRY AND PROSE IN A POST-TRUTH WORLD, and EXPORTING REVOLUTION: CUBA’S GLOBAL SOLIDARITY. Randall has also devoted herself to translation, producing ONLY THE ROAD / SOLO EL CAMINO, an anthology of eight decades of Cuban poetry, and individual volumes by Laura Ruiz Montes, Alfredo Zaldívar, Yanira Marimón and Reynaldo García Blanco, among other books. The Operating System published her translations of books by Gregory Randall and Chely Lima. In 2017 Randall was awarded Chihuahua, Mexico’s Medal of Literary Merit. She lives in New Mexico with her partner (now wife) of more than 30 years, the painter Barbara Byers, and travels extensively to read, lecture and teach.
