Miscelanea II of studies dedicated to Fernando Ortiz (1881-1969)

INTERAMERICAS PUBLISHES MAJOR NEW WORK DEDICATED TO RENOWNED CUBAN SCHOLAR FERNANDO ORTIZ

NEW YORK, May 21 - Making a significant contribution to scholarship on the renowned Cuban historian and social scientist Fernando Ortiz (1881-1969), InterAmericas®/Society of Arts and Letter of the Americas/Socieded de Artes y Letras de las Américas, in cooperation withthe Fundación Fernando Ortiz (Havana) and the Instituto de Literatura y Lingüística /Sociedad the Económica de Amigos del País (Havana), announces the publication of Miscelánea II of studies dedicated to Fernando Ortiz (1881-1969) in a limited edition that unites new and previously published material, in Spanish, English, and French, on the life and work of this pivotal figure in Cuban arts and sciences.

Central to the content of Miscelánea II is a comprehensive, updated bibliography of works by Ortiz, his unpublished manuscripts, and secondary literature-a work based on two previous publications edited by Araceli García-Carranza for the Biblioteca Nacional José Martí in Havana: the Bio-Bibliografía de Don Fernando Ortiz (1970) and Don Fernando Ortiz. Suplemento (1994).

The new publication by InterAmericas also includes a chronology of Ortiz's life, published originally in Spanish and here translated into English and French; reprints of selected tributes to Ortiz by his colleagues; a foreword by Miguel Barnet, president of the Fundación Fernando Ortiz (Havana); and the first draft inventory of the Archivo de Fernando Ortiz, the scholar's comprehensive personal archive now held at the Instituto de Literatura y Lingüística/Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País (Havana).

Ortiz, born Fernando Ortiz Fernández, is known as the Tercer Descubridor (Third Discoverer) of Cuba for his groundbreaking writings and research exploring all aspects of Cuban politics and culture, in particular the deeply-rooted traditions of the island's Afro-Cuban population, which had been ignored by previous scholars. Although Ortiz published hundreds of articles and dozens of books in his lifetime, little of his work is available in the United States or in English translation. By publishing Miscelánea II, InterAmericas offers a compendium of carefully selected and edited texts intended to inspire further research into Ortiz's impressive body of work. As Jane Gregory Rubin, director of InterAmericas, writes in her introduction: "There is an urgent need to broaden the public's knowledge of the Ortiz materials, particularly through translation into English of the major works on the culture of the African diaspora."

The title and format of Miscelánea II was inspired by a series of three volumes of essays related to Ortiz studies published in 1955, 1956, and 1957 by the Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País: Miscelánea de estudios dedicados a Fernando Ortiz por sus discipulos, colegas y amigos, con ocasión de cumplirse sesenta años de la publicación de su primer impreso en Menorca en 1895, Volumes I, II, and III.