1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910780989403321

Autore

Tinajero Araceli <1962->

Titolo

El lector [[electronic resource] ] : a history of the cigar factory reader / / Araceli Tinajero; translated by Judith E. Grasberg

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Austin, : University of Texas Press, 2010

ISBN

0-292-79336-7

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (301 p.)

Collana

LLILAS Translations from Latin America series

Disciplina

306.4/88

Soggetti

Oral reading

Tobacco industry - Cuba - History

Tobacco workers - Cuba - History

Tobacco industry - Puerto Rico - History

Tobacco workers - Puerto Rico - History

Tobacco industry - United States - History

Tobacco workers - United States - History

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Prologue to the English Edition -- Introduction -- Part I Reading Aloud in Cigar Factories until 1900 -- 1. Cuba -- 2. From Cuba to Spain -- Part II “Workshop Graduates” and “Workers in Exile” -- 3. Key West -- 4. Tampa -- 5. Luisa Capetillo -- Part III Cigar Factory Lectores in Cuba, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic, 1902–2005 -- 6. Cuba, 1902–1959 -- 7. Cuba, 1959–2005 -- 8. Mexico: The Echoes of Reading -- 9. The Dominican Republic -- Epilogue -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

The practice of reading aloud has a long history, and the tradition still survives in Cuba as a hard-won right deeply embedded in cigar factory workers' culture. In El Lector, Araceli Tinajero deftly traces the evolution of the reader from nineteenth-century Cuba to the present and its eventual dissemination to Tampa, Key West, Puerto Rico, and Mexico. In interviews with present-day and retired readers, she records testimonies that otherwise would have been lost forever, creating a valuable archive for future historians. Through a close examination of



journals, newspapers, and personal interviews, Tinajero relates how the reading was organized, how the readers and readings were selected, and how the process affected the relationship between workers and factory owners. Because of the reader, cigar factory workers were far more cultured and in touch with the political currents of the day than other workers. But it was not only the reading material, which provided political and literary information that yielded self-education, that influenced the workers; the act of being read to increased the discipline and timing of the artisan's job.