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THE HYPHEN-NATION OF CUBAN-EDUCATED AFRICANS: RETHINKING THE '1.5 GENERATION' PARADIGM
Abstract
This article examines the relevance of the often-cited 'one-and-a-half' generation paradigm (Rumbaut 1991; Pérez Firmat 1994) to cultural groups other than those 'born in Cuba, made in the USA'. The thesis, which has been extensively used as a framework for the Cuban diaspora in the United States, argues that when the experience of exile and displacement of long-term cross-cultural migration occurs during adolescence, the resulting hyphenated or culturally intermediate generation forms a distinctive cohort. Importantly, these 'one-and-a-halfers' are partial insiders in two distinct cultural worlds, and become translation artists, balancing their lives 'on the hyphen'. Considering three illustrative cases-southern Sudanese, Western Saharan Polisario front refugees, and Ghanaians - from among the dozens of Cuban-educated African groups, I argue that the '1.5' paradigm is fitting: while it is their age of arrival to Cuba, rather than departure from it that is at stake, all of these students' lives and identities were profoundly hyphenated by their arrival in Cuba as adolescents and subsequent isolation and long-term experiences there. Their preferences in food, sports, language, fashion, as well as beliefs about reciprocity, proper gender roles and sexuality, and their educational aspirations, all uncannily fit the one-and-a-half profile. That they have not been embraced as hyphenated Cubans within the diaspora is likely a matter of scale and distance, but may also speak to a longue durée of ambivalence about Africa as well as political factors within the exilic Cuban Studies establishment.
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Cubanness - cubanidad or cubanía (Kapcia 2000) José Martí's 'Nuestra América' (Martí 1993) La Caridad de Cobre (Portuondo Zúñiga 2001) Caliban (Fernández Retamar 2006) Ubierta Gómez 1993; Torres-Cuevas 1995, 1996; García 1995; Hernández 1995
http://elporvenirdelsahara.blogspot.com/2009/05/profile-of-cubarawi.html.
Caribeños del Sahara (Pérez 2007): http://canaldocumental.blogspot. com/2008/02/iratxe-prez-navarra-1982-caribeos-del.html. Caribeños del Desierto (Pérez and Galdeano 2008). Knauer 2008 Caribeños del Desierto: http://vodpod. com/watch/673644-caribeos-del-desierto or http://video.google.es/videoplay?docid=79 49630530407106225&hl=es. Caribeños del Sáhara website, with photos, poetry, and additional prose: http://www.caribbeanofthesahara.com/index.htm.
Richmond (1991); Figueroa Araujo (1976).