Zuleica Romay wins Casa Prize

Madeleine Sautié Rodríguez

CUBAN Zuleica Romay was awarded the Casa de las Américas extraordinary prize for research into the African presence in contemporary Latin America and the Caribbean, for her essay Elogio de la altea o las paradojas de la racialidad, in the recently 53rd edition of this prestigious literary competition.

"It‘s the most important prize I have won in my brief career as a writer. Writing the book made me feel a better human being," Romay told the press after receiving the well merited prize, according to the jury, awarded "because her essay has "thematic coherence and unity of project, and provides a narrative in which the author fully places herself as the subject of a historical experience about which she speaks with knowledge and documented foundation."

Prizes in the theater genre went to Argentine Ignacio Apolo and Laura Gutman for El tao del sexo; in children’s and young adults’ literature, to Josefina Porcelli Piussi, for her novel Mi hermano llegó de otro planeta un día de mucho viento; in Caribbean literature in French or Creole, Haitian Gary Víctor for his work Le sang et la mer; and Brazilian literature, to João José Reis, Flávio dos Santos Gomes and Marcos J. M. de Carvalho for O alufá Rufino Tráfico, escravidão e liberdade no Atlântico negro (1822-1853).

The prize for studies on Latinos in the United States went to essayist Cristina Beltrán for The Trouble with Unity: Latino Politics and the Creation of Identity.
The Ezequiel Martínez Estrada Essay prize was awarded to Peruvian Raúl Bueno for Promesa y descontento de la modernidad. Estudios literarios y culturales en América Latina. The José María Arguedas Narrative Prize was given to Argentine Ricardo Piglia, for Blanco nocturno. Finally, the José Lezama Lima Poetry Prize was for and Ecuadorian Humberto Vinueza for his Obra cierta. Antología poética.