A Posthumous History of José Martí: The Apostle and his Afterlife - Routledge Studies in Latin American and Iberian Literature

A Posthumous History of José Martì: The Apostle and His Afterlife focuses on Martì's posthumous legacy and his lasting influence on succeeding generations of Cubans on the island and abroad. Over 120 years after his death on a Cuban battlefield in 1895, Martì studies have long been the contested property of opposing sides in an ongoing ideological battle. Both the Cuban nation-state, which claims Martì as a crucial inspiration for its Marxist revolutionary government, and diasporic communities in the US who honor Martì as a figure of hope for the Cuban nation-in-exile, insist on the centrality of his words and image for their respective visions of Cuban nationhood. The book also explores more recent scholarship that has reassessed Martì's literary, cultural, and ideological value, allowing us to read him beyond the Havana-Miami axis toward engagement with a broader historical and geographical tableau. Martì has thus begun to outgrow his mutually-reinforcing cults in Cuba and the diaspora, to assume his true significance as a hemispheric and global writer and thinker.