(Image: Duke University Press)
By Peter McLaren, Truthout
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The award-winning author and oral historian Margaret Randall first met Cuban revolutionary Haydée Santamaría Cuadrado in 1967 at a gathering of poets and critics held to celebrate Ruben Dario, the great Nicaraguan modernist.
"I was immediately attracted to her passion, to the way she looked everyone in the eye, really saw us, really listened," Randall told me, adding that she met Santamaría again at the Havana Cultural Congress in 1968 and got to know her better after she went to live in Cuba in 1969. "She was always special to me. She seemed to embody the best of that human capital that had risked so much to change their nation's future."
Now Randall has released a new book, Haydée Santamaría, Cuban Revolutionary: She Led by Transgression. Beautifully crafted, comprehensive and emotionally riveting, the book illustrates with historical precision and emotional power the life and times of one of the great revolutionary figures of all time.
Randall herself is also an inspiring figure whose work I have been following since the late 1980s when I read her oral history, Sandino's Daughters: Testimonies of Nicaraguan Women in Struggle, which had won praise from luminaries, such as Adrienne Rich and musicians, such as Holly Near.
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