
Bookmark This is a feature that highlights new books by College of Arts and Sciences faculty and alumni, published the first week of each month. The February featured book is Defending Rumba in Havana: The Sacred and the Black Corporeal Undercommons (Duke University Press) by Maya J. Berry.
Q: Can you give us a brief synopsis of your book?
A: Defending Rumba in Havana is an ethnography about how race, class, gender, the sacred and geopolitics intersect. The book examines the ways that a sector of the Black working poor assess and address the challenges of private-market expansion, as the Cuban state endeavors to “update” the Revolution for the 21st century. A historically Black working-class genre of popular music and dance, I analyze rumba as a method of Black Cuban struggle that provides the community, accountability, sustenance and dignity that neither the state nor the expanding private market can deliver. Too often reduced to “Cuban folkloric dance,” this study takes rumba seriously as a means of grassroots organizing in Havana. My book underscores that rumberos (practitioners of rumba) are uniquely positioned to teach us about the politics of culture and how it can reveal the limits of formal politics and development designs.
Q: How does this fit in with your research interests and passions?
A: I am deeply inspired by global Black feminisms in theory and practice. I approached fieldwork for this project as participatory engagement in which I too was implicated and had a stake. In other words, this book is my way of rising to Black feminism’s challenge to think from the specificity of local lived experiences in a way that provides analytical tools to sharpen our intersectional understanding of the Black diaspora.
Q: What was the original idea that made you think: “There’s a book here?”
A: Perhaps the original idea for the book came from a comment made by a committee member at my doctoral defense which, at the time, I eschewed! Rumba was only one part of a broader comparative study on practices of Black self-organization in Havana. That committee member (the brilliant performance studies scholar Deborah Paredez) insisted that the rumba component alone had the potential to illuminate everything I wanted to say about the complexities, tensions and possibilities that I found so exciting about the research. Even though it took me much longer to finish the book than I had hoped, I’m grateful I ultimately heeded the recommendation.
Q: What surprised you when researching/writing this book?
A: This research involved long-term commitment to dance training. Actually learning the craft, rather than just basing my understanding on observation, led to invaluable insights that would not have been gleaned otherwise. For instance, I was surprised by the differences between the prevailing discourse about rumba and the explanations given by my teachers in specific situations. This prompted me to delve more deeply into understanding why specific bodily techniques and their interpretations — so crucial from a practice perspective— could be completely absent from the most-circulated descriptions about the form which influence the popular imagination. This difference often pointed toward spiritual dimensions that were considered “primitive” and barbaric since the time of slavery and taboo or out of place even after the selective incorporation of their aesthetic elements into the project of Cuban nationalism. My research experience equipped me — and emboldened me — to challenge common sense understandings about the terms of Black inclusion within the history of Cuban nation-state formation, and to articulate what is at stake for the descendants of the enslaved in Cuba’s present socioeconomic landscape and political state of affairs.
Q: Where’s your go-to writing spot, and how do you deal with writer’s block?
A: The bulk of the book was written during pandemic lockdown from my home office. To break the isolation that can often lend itself to writer’s block, I relied heavily on a virtual writing group composed of friends from grad school. Although we were located at different institutions across the country, we shared the same goal of writing our first book. In every session we did a mix of synchronous writing and brainstorming about concrete strategies or solutions to whatever writing challenge we were facing. Sharing our personal struggles with writing brought out our collective wisdom — and lots of laughter, too. Our weekly writing group remains a vital source of accountability, support and companionship.
Maya J. Berry is an assistant professor in the department of African, African American and diaspora studies. Her teaching and research interests focus on African diaspora studies, performance studies, Black feminisms, dance, Cuba, Latin America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean.
Berry’s book has been praised as “meticulously and beautifully written and among the best Cuban ethnographies in the Post-Fidel era.” It is the winner of the Duke University Press Scholars of Color First Book Award.
Read more books by College authors via our fall 2024 books list and nominate a book we should feature by emailing college-news@unc.edu.