Roberto G. Fernández
Encyclopedia
Roberto G. Fernández is a Cuban American
novelist and short story
writer. He is noted for his grotesque
satires of the Cuban American community, especially in his English-language novels, Raining Backwards and Holy Radishes! He is currently the Dorothy Lois Breen Hoffman Professor of Modern Languages and Linguistics at Florida State University
.
, which he now considers his home, although he lives and teaches in Tallahassee, Florida
.
Fernández is known for the way he satirizes the Cuban community in Miami. One critic says that he "has mastered like no other the carnivalesque art of portraying grotesquely a community in a perpetual state of crisis." For instance, Raining Backwards depicts a generation "caught between two cultural worlds that they do not fully undersand and to which they do not fully belong."
Although Fernández's first two books, written in Spanish, were "well received within the Cuban exile literary community", he did not gain wide critical attention until he published in English.
"No one writs about the Cuban-American experience with more voltage, more originality and imagination, than Roberto Fernández..." -Bob Shacochis, author of Easy in the Islands, Next New World, and Swimming in the Volcano.
"Fernández's spirited, appealing book, with its hyperbolic visions, is like an Under Milkwood written by a Cuban William Burroughs." -Publishers Weekly
"Holy Radishes! is a perfectly wonderful, magical book. It is by turns witty and wise, comic and tragic, in the clouds and down in the dirt. Even Dickens would be proud to have created such a cast of original and memorable characters. And not even Disney could have created a pig like the unforgettable Rigoletto." -Jesse Lee Kercheval, author of Museum of Happiness and Dogeater.
"Exhibiting the flair and inventiveness for which he is justly renowned, Roberto Fernández's brilliant new novel [En la Ocho y la Doce] draws a portrait of Cuban Americans that is at once hilarous and humane, cockeyed and compassionate. An excellent introduction to an often misunderstood community." -Gustavo Pérez Firmat, Columbia University
"Code-switching is an art... and Roberto G. Fernández is the consummate artist..." -Doris Sommer, Harvard University
Cuban American
A Cuban American is a United States citizen who traces his or her "national origin" to Cuba. Cuban Americans are also considered native born Americans with Cuban parents or Cuban-born persons who were raised and educated in US...
novelist and short story
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
writer. He is noted for his grotesque
Grotesque
The word grotesque comes from the same Latin root as "Grotto", meaning a small cave or hollow. The original meaning was restricted to an extravagant style of Ancient Roman decorative art rediscovered and then copied in Rome at the end of the 15th century...
satires of the Cuban American community, especially in his English-language novels, Raining Backwards and Holy Radishes! He is currently the Dorothy Lois Breen Hoffman Professor of Modern Languages and Linguistics at Florida State University
Florida State University
The Florida State University is a space-grant and sea-grant public university located in Tallahassee, Florida, United States. It is a comprehensive doctoral research university with medical programs and significant research activity as determined by the Carnegie Foundation...
.
Early life
Fernández's family immigrated to the States in 1961, when Fernández was ten. He grew up in Miami, FloridaMiami, Florida
Miami is a city located on the Atlantic coast in southeastern Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, the most populous county in Florida and the eighth-most populous county in the United States with a population of 2,500,625...
, which he now considers his home, although he lives and teaches in Tallahassee, Florida
Tallahassee, Florida
Tallahassee is the capital of the U.S. state of Florida. It is the county seat and only incorporated municipality in Leon County, and is the 128th largest city in the United States. Tallahassee became the capital of Florida, then the Florida Territory, in 1824. In 2010, the population recorded by...
.
Literary work
Fernández has been said to be part of the Cuban American avant-garde. His writing is said toengage the links among history, exile, personal, and collective identity, and simultaneously defamiliarize them through parodyParodyA parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
and pastichePasticheA pastiche is a literary or other artistic genre or technique that is a "hodge-podge" or imitation. The word is also a linguistic term used to describe an early stage in the development of a pidgin language.-Hodge-podge:...
, counteracting in such a move the underlying poignancy of the diasporicDiasporaA diaspora is "the movement, migration, or scattering of people away from an established or ancestral homeland" or "people dispersed by whatever cause to more than one location", or "people settled far from their ancestral homelands".The word has come to refer to historical mass-dispersions of...
experience.
Fernández is known for the way he satirizes the Cuban community in Miami. One critic says that he "has mastered like no other the carnivalesque art of portraying grotesquely a community in a perpetual state of crisis." For instance, Raining Backwards depicts a generation "caught between two cultural worlds that they do not fully undersand and to which they do not fully belong."
Although Fernández's first two books, written in Spanish, were "well received within the Cuban exile literary community", he did not gain wide critical attention until he published in English.
Critical acclaim
"Fernández brings to his narrative a lively innovative style and first-hand intimacy with the Cuban-American community. The result is a zany, unpredictable book that keeps its readers interested and surprised." on Raining Backwards, -San Francisco Chronicle"No one writs about the Cuban-American experience with more voltage, more originality and imagination, than Roberto Fernández..." -Bob Shacochis, author of Easy in the Islands, Next New World, and Swimming in the Volcano.
"Fernández's spirited, appealing book, with its hyperbolic visions, is like an Under Milkwood written by a Cuban William Burroughs." -Publishers Weekly
"Holy Radishes! is a perfectly wonderful, magical book. It is by turns witty and wise, comic and tragic, in the clouds and down in the dirt. Even Dickens would be proud to have created such a cast of original and memorable characters. And not even Disney could have created a pig like the unforgettable Rigoletto." -Jesse Lee Kercheval, author of Museum of Happiness and Dogeater.
"Exhibiting the flair and inventiveness for which he is justly renowned, Roberto Fernández's brilliant new novel [En la Ocho y la Doce] draws a portrait of Cuban Americans that is at once hilarous and humane, cockeyed and compassionate. An excellent introduction to an often misunderstood community." -Gustavo Pérez Firmat, Columbia University
"Code-switching is an art... and Roberto G. Fernández is the consummate artist..." -Doris Sommer, Harvard University
Published works
- Cuentos sin rumbo [Aimless Tales] (story collection; 1975)
- La vida es un special ["Life is a Bargain"] (1982)
- La montaña rusa [The Roller Coaster] (story cycle; 1985)
- Raining Backwards (1988)
- Holy Radishes! (1995)
- En la ocho y la doce [The Corner of Eighth and Twelfth] (2001)
- Entre dos aguas (2007)
- Published short stories include “Wrong Channel”, “The Brewery”, “Is in the Stars” and “It’s not Easy”
Awards
- Cintas Foundation Fellowship (1986–87)
- Florida Arts Council Fellowship (1993)
See also
Critical studies in English
as of August 2011:- Operational (Hyper)realities in the Exilic Labyrinth: Roberto G. Fernández's Construction and Destruction of Identity through Parodic Simulacra By: David de Posada. IN: DeRosa, Simulation in Media and Culture: Believing the Hype. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books; 2011. pp& nsbs; 187-197.
- Cuban; American Literature: Suspicion of a Rupture in the Assimilation Pattern? By: Humberto López Cruz. IN: N: Giordano, The Hyphenate Writer and the Legacy of Exile. New York, NY: Bordighera Press; 2010. pp.& nbsp; 85-97.
- Three Waves of Immigration Waving of Immigration:Waving (Wavene) the Flag of Patriotic Fervor By: William O. Deaver. IN: Giordano, The Hyphenate Writer and the Legacy of Exile. New York, NY: Bordighera Press; 2010. pp.& nbsp; 67-84.
- Operatic Transposition and the Romantic Aesthetic in the Works of Roberto G. Fernández By: David de Posada, "Caribe: Revista de Cultura y Literatura," 11.2 (2009): 23-42.
- Treacherous Pilgrimages: Identity and Travel in Roberto G. Fernández's The Augustflower By: Rafael Miguel Montes. IN: Glassman, Tolchin, and Brahlek, Florida Studies Proceedings of the 2005 Annual Meeting of the Florida College English Association. Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars; 2006. pp. 218–27
- Memory and Desire in Exile: The Narrative Strategies of Raining Backwards By: Arlene Guerrero-Watanabe; Caribe: Revista de Cultura y Literatura, 2004 Summer; 7 (1): 25-42.
- La tríada Belle Glade, Miami, Xawa: Tres nombres, tres culturas y un solo espacio novelesco en la narrativa de Roberto G. Fernández By: Jorge Febles, Hispanic Journal, 2004 Spring-Fall; 25 (1-2): 225-41.
- Roberto G. Fernández (1951-) By: Guillermo B. Irizarry, IN: West-Durán, Herrera-Sobek, and Salgado, Latino and Latina Writers, I: Introductory Essays, Chicano and Chicana Authors; II: Cuban and Cuban American Authors, Dominican and Other Authors, Puerto Rican Authors. New York, NY: Scribner's; 2004. pp. 591–611
- Janus Identities and Forked Tongues: Two Caribbean Writers in the United States By: Rosanna Rivero Marín. New York, NY: Peter Lang; 2004. viii, 153 pp. (book)
- Is Memory the Amnesia You Like? Some Remarks on Self-Invention and the Presence of Caribbean Literature in North America By: Wolfgang Binder, GRAAT: Publication des Groupes de Recherches Anglo-Américaines de l'Université François Rabelais de Tours, 2003; 27: 293-99.
- Geographies of Identity in Cuban American Narrative By: Antonia Domínguez Miguela, IN: Alonso Gallo and Domínguez Miguela, Evolving Origins, Transplanting Cultures: Literary Legacies of the New Americans. Huelva, Spain: Universidad de Huelva; 2002. pp. 267–75
- The Intercepted Space: Desired and Summed Identity in Holly [Holy] Radishes by Cuban American Writer, Roberto G. Fernández By: Clementina R. Adams, Diáspora: Journal of the Annual Afro-Hispanic Literature and Culture Conference, 2001; 11: 66-71.
- Generational Conflicts in Raining Backwards by Roberto G. Fernández By: Henry Pérez, Publications of the Arkansas Philological Association, 2000 Fall; 26 (2): 33-44.
- Memories of Cuba in Roberto G. Fernández's Raining Backwards By: Henry Pérez, Publications of the Arkansas Philological Association, 1998 Fall; 24 (2): 47-57.
- Intimate Dwellings: Meditations on Shelter and Sheltered Meditations in Roberto G. Fernández's Coquina House By: William O. Deaver, Jr.; RLA: Romance Languages Annual, 1998; 10 (2): 529-33.
- Holy Radishes! Image is Everything By: William O., Deaver, Jr.. IN: Berry, NAHLS Bringing the World Together. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI; 1997. pp. 218–29
- From Polyglossia to Disglossia: Defining ChronotopeChronotopeIn the philosophy of language and philology, chronotope is a term coined by M.M. Bakhtin to describe the way time and space are described by language, and, in particular, how literature represents them...
, Authority, and Subversion in Raining Backwards By: William O. Deaver, Jr.; RLA: Romance Languages Annual, 1997; 9: 448-52. - The Prodigal Son in the Structure of Raining Backwards, Crazy Love, and Latin Jazz By: William O. Deaver, Jr.; Americas Review: A Review of Hispanic Literature and Art of the USA, 1996 Fall-Winter; 24 (3-4): 179-90.
- A Technological Novelty in Raining Backwards: The Creation of a Virtual RealityVirtual realityVirtual reality , also known as virtuality, is a term that applies to computer-simulated environments that can simulate physical presence in places in the real world, as well as in imaginary worlds...
By: Humberto López Cruz, Americas Review: A Review of Hispanic Literature and Art of the USA, 1996 Fall-Winter; 24 (3-4): 191-200. - Menippean SatireMenippean satireThe genre of Menippean satire is a form of satire, usually in prose, which has a length and structure similar to a novel and is characterized by attacking mental attitudes instead of specific individuals...
and Skaz in Raining Backwards By: William O. Deaver, Jr.; Confluencia: Revista Hispánica de Cultura y Literatura, 1996 Fall; 12 (1): 168-77. - Structure, Theme, Motif, and Dialogue in Raining Backwards By: William O. Deaver, Jr.; Chattahoochee Review: The DeKalb College Literary Quarterly, 1996 Summer; 16 (4): 100-12.
- Raining Backwards: Stylization and Mimicry By: William O. Deaver, Jr.; RLA: Romance Languages Annual, 1995; 7: 446-49.
- American Contradictions: Interviews with Nine American Writers By: Wolfgang Binder (ed.). Hanover, NH: UP of New England; 1995.
- A Connecticut Yankee in Cuban Miami: Reflections on the Meaning of Underdevelopment and Cultural Change By: Juan Leon, Michigan Quarterly Review, 1994 Fall; 33 (4): 690-701.
- A Character's Indictment of Authorial Subterfuge: The Parody of Texts in Roberto G. Fernandez's Fiction By: Jorge Febles, IN: Cancalon and Spacagna, IntertextualityIntertextualityIntertextuality is the shaping of texts' meanings by other texts. It can include an author’s borrowing and transformation of a prior text or to a reader’s referencing of one text in reading another. The term “intertextuality” has, itself, been borrowed and transformed many times since it was coined...
in Literature and Film. Gainesville: UP of Florida; 1994. pp. 21–35 - Raining Backwards: Colonization and the Death of a Culture By: William O. Deaver, Jr.; The Americas Review: A Review of Hispanic Literature and Art of the USA, 1993 Spring; 21 (1): 112-18.
- English and Spanish Pop Songs as Part of Character Speech: Cultural HybridityHybridityHybridity refers in its most basic sense to mixture. The term originates from biology and was subsequently employed in linguistics and in racial theory in the nineteenth century. Its contemporary uses are scattered across numerous academic disciplines and is salient in popular culture...
in Roberto G. Fernández's Raining Backwards By: Jorge Febles, IN: Ryan-Ransom, Imagination, Emblems and Expressions: Essays on Latin American, Caribbean, and Continental Culture and Identity. Bowling Green, OH: Popular; 1993. pp. 99–108 - Gender in Exile: Mothers and Daughters in Roberto G. Fernández's Raining Backwards By: Mary S. Vásquez, IN: Whitlark and Aycock, The Literature of Emigration and Exile. Lubbock: Texas Tech UP; 1992. pp. 79–85
- Family, Generation, and Gender in Two Novels of Cuban Exile: Into the Mainstream? By: Mary S. Vásquez, The Bilingual Review/La revista bilingüe, 1991 Jan-Apr; 16 (1): 23-34.
- The FantasticFantasticThe Fantastic is a literary term that describes a quality of other literary genres, and, in some cases, is used as a genre in and of itself, although in this case it is often conflated with the Supernatural. The term was originated in the structuralist theory of critic Tzvetan Todorov in his work...
and the GrotesqueGrotesqueThe word grotesque comes from the same Latin root as "Grotto", meaning a small cave or hollow. The original meaning was restricted to an extravagant style of Ancient Roman decorative art rediscovered and then copied in Rome at the end of the 15th century...
in the Fiction of Roberto Fernández: The Case of Raining Backwards By: Mary S. Vásquez, Confluencia: Revista Hispanica de Cultura y Literatura, 1990 Fall; 6 (1): 75-84. - ParodyParodyA parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
, IntertextualityIntertextualityIntertextuality is the shaping of texts' meanings by other texts. It can include an author’s borrowing and transformation of a prior text or to a reader’s referencing of one text in reading another. The term “intertextuality” has, itself, been borrowed and transformed many times since it was coined...
and Cultural Values in Roberto G. Fernández' Raining Backwards By: Mary S. Vásquez, The Americas Review: A Review of Hispanic Literature and Art of the USA, 1990 Summer; 18 (2): 92-102. - Transcending the Culture of ExileExileExile means to be away from one's home , while either being explicitly refused permission to return and/or being threatened with imprisonment or death upon return...
: Raining Backwards By: Gabriella Ibieta, IN: Bevan, Literature and Exile. Amsterdam: Rodopi; 1990. pp. 67–76
External links
- Arte Público bio
- Henry Pérez, "Culture and Sexuality: Women in Raining Backwards"