Autobiografía de un esclavo es el primer testimonio en castellano de la esclavitud sufrida en las colonias españolas del Nuevo Mundo. Por tanto, tiene un gran valor histórico, a pesar de estar inacabada porque la segunda parte -Apuntes autobiográficos- no se conserva, por ser considerada una obra clave de la narrativa antiesclavista y del periodo colonial. Salió a la luz en 1937, una centuria después de que se comenzara a escribir en 1835 por Juan Francisco Manzano. En esta Autobiografía, Manzano relata su vida en la esclavitud y todo lo que ello supone cuando sirve a su primera ama, Beatriz de Jústiz de Santa, quien gracias a su aperturismo consigue leer numerosas obras y aprender a escribir; o cuando sirve en casa de la marquesa de Prado Ameno, una señora autoritaria que provoca su huida.

This is a revised second edition of Edward Mullen's landmark scholarly presentation of Juan Francisco Manazo's autobiography and poetry. Taking into account the extensive scholarship that has accrued in the intervening decades, this is an accessible, essential resource for scholars and students of Caribbean literatures.

Juan Francisco Manzano and Gabriel de la Concepción Valdés (Plácido) were perhaps the most important and innovative Cuban writers of African descent during the Spanish colonial era. Both nineteenth-century authors used Catholicism as a symbolic language for African-inspired spirituality. Likewise, Plácido and Manzano subverted the popular imagery of neoclassicism and Romanticism in order to envision black freedom in the tradition of the Haitian Revolution. Plácido and Manzano envisioned emancipation through the lens of African spirituality, a transformative moment in the history of Cuban letters. Matthew Pettway examines how the portrayal of African ideas of spirit and cosmos in otherwise conventional texts recur throughout early Cuban literature and became the basis for Manzano and Plácido’s antislavery philosophy. The portrayal of African-Atlantic religious ideas spurned the elite rationale that literature ought to be a barometer of highbrow cultural progress. Cuban debates about freedom and selfhood were never the exclusive domain of the white Creole elite. Pettway’s emphasis on African-inspired spirituality as a source of knowledge and a means to sacred authority for black Cuban writers deepens our understanding of Manzano and Plácido not as mere imitators but as aesthetic and political pioneers. As Pettway suggests, black Latin American authors did not abandon their African religious heritage to assimilate wholesale to the Catholic Church. By recognizing the wisdom of African ancestors, they procured power in the struggle for black liberation.

"Autobiografía de un Esclavo" fue una de las varias obras escritas por Juan Francisco Manzano en su vida y fue publicada en 1840. Esta obra es una autobiografía poderosa y reveladora, donde Manzano narra su viaje desde la esclavitud hacia la libertad, ofreciendo una visión íntima y profunda de su vida y de las condiciones que enfrentaban los esclavizados en Cuba. A lo largo del tiempo, se han escrito y continúan escribiéndose varias biografías sobre este icónico poeta y ex esclavo, con una calidad y amplitud cada vez mayores. Sin embargo, para conocer el pensamiento y el modo de ser de una persona real, no hay nada mejor que escuchar la historia con todas sus circunstancias, errores y aciertos contada por quien las vivió en primera persona. Este es el propósito de esta autobiografía de Juan Francisco Manzano: llevar al público al hombre valiente y visionario, que, a través de su perseverancia e inteligencia, se convirtió en una de las voces más influyentes en la lucha por la libertad y los derechos de los afrodescendientes en América Latina. Esta obra forma parte de la colección "Voces hispánicas", que tiene como objetivo destacar las historias de vida de figuras importantes en la historia hispanoamericana, contadas por ellos mismos.

Writing for Inclusion is a study of some of the ways the idea of national identity developed in the nineteenth century in two neighboring nations, Cuba and The United States. The book examines symbolic, narrative, and sociological commonalities in the writings of four Afro-Cuban and African American writers: Juan Francisco Manzano and Frederick Douglass, fugitive slaves during mid-century; and Martín Morúa Delgado and Charles W. Chesnutt from the post-slavery period. All four share sensitivity to their imperfect inclusion as full citizens, engage in an examination of the process of racialization that hinders them in seeking such inclusion, and contest their definition as non-citizens. Works discussed include the slave narratives of Manzano and Douglass, Manzano’s poetry and play Zafira, andDouglass’s oratory and novella The Heroic Slave. Also considered, within the context provided by Manzano and Douglass, are Morúa and Chesnutt’s non-fiction writings about race and nation as well as their second-generation “tragic mulata” novels Sofía and The House Behind the Cedars. Based on an examination of the works of these four authors, Writing for Inclusion provides a detailed examination of examples of self-emancipation, the authors’ symbolic use of language, their expression of social anxieties or irony within the quest for recognition, and their arguments for an inclusive vision of national identity beyond the quagmires of race. By focusing on the process of racialization and ideas of race and national identity in a comparative context, the study seeks to highlight the artificial and contested nature of both terms and suggest new ways to interrogate them in our present day.