SOURCE: Luis, William. “Fiction and Fact: The Antislavery Narrative and Blacks as Counter-Discourse in Cuban History.” In Literary Bondage: Slavery in Cuban Narrative, pp. 1-17. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990.

In the following excerpt, Luis discusses the historical and social conditions in Cuba that made the condemnation of the slave trade and slavery itself a growing concern in nineteenth-century Cuban literature.

Fiction

Antislavery narrative refers to a group of works written mainly during the 1830s, an incipient and prolific moment in Cuban literature. They include ex-slave Juan Francisco Manzano's Autobiografía (written in 1835, published in England in 1840 and in Cuba in 1937), Anselmo Suárez y Romero's Francisco (written in 1839, published in 1880), and Félix Tanco y Bosmeniel's Escenas de la vida privada en la isla de Cuba (written in 1838, published in 1925) and “Un niño en la Habana” (written in 1837, published in 1986).¹ These early works were requested by...