Symposium on censorship of U.S. black books comes to a close

HAVANA, Cuba, Dec 8 (ACN) The Union of Cuban Writers and Artists (UNEAC) hosted the last day of the Symposium "Banning Black Books, Silencing Black Voices: Apartheid in the United States", organized by Morgan State University and Casa de las Americas.

A dialogue between Dr. Adele Newson-Horst, director of the English department at Morgan State University, and Cuban poet, translator and literary critic Nancy Morejon took center stage in a session attended by Abel Prieto, President of Casa de las Americas, and Miguel Barnet, Honorary President of UNEAC, as well as by Cuban and American intellectuals, creators and academics.

Newson-Horst praised the significance of the initiative "to discuss similar experiences and talk about the damage caused by capitalism to the lower classes and to blacks and Hispanic immigrants”. On her end, Morejon described it as “a major academic exchange between the universities of Morgan and of Havana, and particularly with UNEAC, on Caribbean identity and what black African culture has been to and influenced the Americas”.

UNEAC president Marta Bonet highlighted the friendship between the Cuban National Poet Nicolás Guillén and [U.S. poet and novelist] Langston Hughes, bonded by the urge to fight for equality and vindicate the legacy of African peoples.

De Wayne Wickham, dean emeritus of the School of Journalism at Morgan State University, said that the Symposium “was a great opportunity to find common ground between the American, Cuban and Caribbean black communities, as well as to create new spaces to fight against the U.S. blockade of Cuba and to keep defending the cultural identity of all the countries of the Americas. And this is only the beginning”, he emphasized.

In closing the event, the prominent intellectual Abel Prieto stressed that in Cuba the battle against racial discrimination was always supported by the historic leader of the Revolution, Fidel Castro Ruz, and thanked the U.S. scholars for coming to discuss exclusion and racism, a scourge that still persists around the world.