The Life And Poems Of A Cuban Slave: Juan Francisco Manzano 1797?1854 (afro-latin@ Diasporas)

Original spelling and punctuation have been maintained throughout. Only obvious errors of punctuation and spelling have been corrected. Glosses have been supplied to clarify literary, historic, and geographic allusions. We have supplied as well the original Spanish-language versions of three of Manzano's poems that appear in the text. These are from Parnaso cubano, edited by Antonio López Prieto (Habana; Miguel de Villa, 1881), 253-55. ## This page intentionally left blank acknowledgments I wish to express gratitude to the British Museum and Library for facilitating access to the original 1840 edition, to the American Council of Learned Societies, and to the University of Missouri Columbia Research Council, which supported the first edition of this book. I am profoundly grateful to Pippa Letsky who assisted in the editing of this book and is responsible for the index. Special thanks is due to Brenda Klemme for her gracious help in the preparation of the manuscript and to Mike Aperauch and Jeff LaSala of Palgrave Macmillan for their help and patience in the production stage of this book. An earlier version of the Introduction appeared in Chapter 5, "Juan Francisco Manzano: Building a Tradition," of my book, Afro-Cuban Literature: Critical Junctures (Westport CT. Greenwood.1998) and is reprinted with the permission of ABC CLIO. A final word of gratitude is due to those writers and scholars (past and present) whose scholarship on Juan Francisco Manzano and Richard Robert Madden truly made this study possible. Out of print for nearly two decades, Edward Mullen's scholarly edition of Juan Francisco Manzano's autobiography and poetry has long been considered the standard text for understanding this remarkable figure's life and work. This revised second edition builds upon the achievement of the first, taking into account the wealth of academic literature that has appeared on Manzano since 1981. Providing a thorough historical, cultural, and literary contextualization, this is an accessible, essential resource for scholars and students of Caribbean literatures Front Matter....Pages i-xi Introduction....Pages 1-36 Front Matter....Pages 37-40 Preface....Pages 41-43 The Slave-Trade Merchant; A Poem....Pages 45-53 The Sugar Estate; A Poem....Pages 55-75 Life of the Negro Poet....Pages 77-99 Poems, Written in Slavery, by Juan----....Pages 101-113 A Specimen of Inedited Cuban Poems....Pages 115-116 Appendix....Pages 117-197 Manzano’s Poems in the Original Spanish....Pages 199-202 Back Matter....Pages 203-221 This is a revised second edition of Edward Mullen's landmark scholarly presentation of Juan Francisco Manazo's autobiography and poetry. Taking into account the extensive scholarship that has accrued in the intervening decades, this is an accessible, essential resource for scholars and students of Caribbean literatures.