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Cincuenta Lecciones de Exilio y Desexilio

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Gustavo Pérez-Firmat. Cincuenta Lecciones de Exilio y Desexilio. Miami, Ediciones Universal, 2000. ISBN0-89729-916-7. 123pp

As a poet, a novelist and literary critic but most of all as a `pensador,' the canon for Gustavo Pérez-Firmat has been literature which pushes the limits of language. From the neutral territory of literary criticism in Idle Fictions('82), Literature and Liminality(`86), and the not so neutral Do the Americas Have a Common Literature? (`90), to the radical newness found in his approach to literature and culture in translation in The Cuban Condition ('89) Life on the Hyphen ('94) and Next Year in Cuba ('95) the vintage language in his life's work has been English. Since his earliest poems first published in Bilingual Review, Mariel and Linden Lane Magazine and later collected in Triple Crown ('87) and Bilingual Blues ('95) Pérez-Firmat has alluded, by design, to `la palabra' but from the margins of his poetic and critical production. Throughout his writing the `tema pendiente' seemed to center on the relevance and affinity that a bilingual person experiences only in the language of birth. Determining and describing that event has driven Pérez-Firmat readers to posit: Is it possible to become part of a culture if the language you speak is not your own? As disquieting as the question seems, it is one which is made by many students, and adults alike, who merge, enter, or exit our academic and professional institutions. Pérez-Firmat's most recent study focuses on the issue of language loss, and how the fifty lessons he has compiled, mostly with dead-serious assertions and extreme wit, have taught him the compact all native speakers of Spanish must make with language. Cincuenta Lecciones de Exilio y Desexilio (00) is written in fluid, seamless Spanish, during the weeks prior to the author's fiftieth birthday. Set in a his study while reminiscing of Julio Cortazar's "Continuidad de los parques" the author awaits the night to talk about Cuba, his patria. In typical wit and low-key `choteo' vintaged by Pérez-Firmat, the author is intent in reclaiming Spanish in his life, but finds it difficult to "cambiar la vida." He restructures the furniture of his office as a less painful alternative (17). But the memoirs written during those weeks become the real fantasies of a "poeta-pensador" who recognizes with ascending and controlled rage that of all his loses of `el exilio' there is none greater than language loss. As this realization is made in the text the reader cannot help but swallow the bitter capsule of "pérdida de lenguaje"(117). It is here that Pérez-Firmat is always at his best, for his analytical grasp of the trans-generational schism that separates heritage v. bilingual speakers--tradition v. translation is a continuous line of analysis which has earned him awards and praise. From The Cuban Condition ('89) and Life on the Hyphen ('94) to the present discourse on the cultural implications of generational language loss, the author expands on his personal experiences recounting the earlier breach which separated exiled parents from a first generation of Cuban-Americans and struggles with his children's own loss. Pérez-Firmat, after Rumbaut, called his generation the "1.5-ers" or the "one-and-a-halfer" generation. The exhuberant optimisim seen in 1994's work is well balanced by a new found knowledge in Cincuenta lecciones de exilio y desexilio, as he states: "Somos una generación fundida, en todos los sentidos, buenos y malos, del adjetivo..."(33) To choose to speak, write and publish in English for Pérez-Firmat was an act of defiance, a distancing from `exilio' which continually links his bilingual experience to that of many Spanish heritage speakers in today's classroom. In one of many poignant interrogatories in which the reader is continually immersed, the author clearly articulates the one wish made by all parents who have suffered that double loss: "siempre me pregunto ¿qué pensarían mis hijos si nos conocieramos en mi lengua materna?"(56). Life for him has been lived in translation, and as he states "de tanto vivir en traducción el español se me ha hecho exótico"(57). Strong emotions tint the pages of this book which comes from living `la vida en vilo'(23). In this sense, the sociological and cultural subtext to be gleaned has great implications for professionals who teach Spanish for Native/Heritage Speakers at all levels of the curriculum. The narrative is especially applicable for cultural components in International Programs where readable Spanish texts on culture synthesis and analytical monologue formats are sorely missing. It is a "must read" but for Spanish graduate programs with a required language proficiency component. In this particular area of expertise I've found Pérez-Firmat's work to offer resources, and insights that are universally cogent and transcultural. The journey of Cincuenta Lecciones de Exilio y Desexilio does not end on the author's birthday. As the author's wish to `destaparse' as a Spanish speaker/writer he has now made his `despacho' a place of "desexilio." It is here the reader is shown a door to the compact we must make with our native language, if not for our sake, for our children's. The writer explains: "El rencor del cual hablaba hace un momento se vence palabra por palabra...la voz trae paz"(56). Exhaling English and inhaling Spanish has been the bilingual literary pace which marked his radical style and set Pérez-Firmat work apart from other writers. The breadth in those bilingual lungs required the author to reorganize his perspective, and to look inward in order to see straight. In this sense, Cincuenta Lecciones de Exilio y Desexilio is Gustavo Pérez-Firmat's own bilingual transculturation of `voz' over `voice,' a journey in which Spanish has unbounded the author's limitless "zona de expresión"(57).

P.A.Pardiñas-Barnes University of San Diego, California

Poignant, incisive and revealing, a revieew of perceptions and circumstances by a genial writer of Cuban-American ethnicity. Intersped there are many revelations of serious maladaptive patterns indicating failure on the part of the author to assimilate into the "melting pot" of americana, the source of the strength for all who have been blessed with the opportunity to live in the land of the free. Perhaps the aphorism "Love it or Leave it" might apply here.