SOURCE: "Nicolás Guillén's 70^th Birthday Conversation with Ciro Bianchi Ross," in The Poetry of Nicolás Guillén, New Beacon Books, 1976, pp. 58-80.

In the following excerpt from a 1972 interview, originally published in Cuba Internacional, Guillén discusses his Cuban childhood, his thoughts on negritude, Cuban politics, and major themes in his work.

[Ciro Bianchi Ross]: How do you judge the literary formation that you received in your childhood? Which things in that childhood are you interested in highlighting now? [Nicolás Guillén]: No, I couldn't speak about a literary formation in the more or less strict sense of the word; and naturally neither from the academic point of view. What happened is that I found so much in my father's house as in my godfather's—both learned and scholarly—books of Spanish and world literature which awoke a great artistic concern in me. My...