Cabrera's Césaire: The Making of a Trans-Caribbean Zone

Aimé Césaire's first book appeared in Cuba, in Spanish translation, in 1943. The book features his most celebrated and circulated poem, "Notebook of a return to the native land," translated by Lydia Cabrera, a writer and ethnologist from Cuba. I argue that Césaire's poem did not merely cross between, or over, languages and places in the event of this translation. Instead, Cabrera's translation project crossed with Césaire's poem, transforming it by way of circulation and translation. The translation thus offers insights into the generative function of circulation and translation in the conformation of geopolitical, historical, and social imaginaries.