Found 3 collections related to Guille��n, Nicola��s, 1902-1989

Personal and professional papers consisting of biographical material, correspondence, writings, printed matter, and a subject file, primarily reflecting his career as a travel editor for several magazines. Also, his Ph.D. dissertation on the life and works of 19th century Cuban poet Gabriel de la Concepcion Valdes (pseudonym Plácido), and his translation into English, with Langston Hughes, of CUBA LIBRE by the Cuban poet Nicolas Guillen. Some material pertains to his teaching career at Howard University and the Society of Americn Writers. less

Nicolás Cristóbal Guillén Batista (1902–1989) was a Cuban poet, journalist, political activist, writer, and the national poet of Cuba. Born in Camagüey, Guillén studied law at the University of Havana, but abandoned a legal career and worked as both a typographer and journalist. His poetry was published in various magazines in the early 1920s; his first collection, Motivos de son (1930) was influenced by his meeting with the African American poet, Langston Hughes. West Indies, Ltd., published in 1934, was Guillén's first collection with political implications. Political repression persisted in Cuba even after the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado was overthrown in 1933. After being jailed in 1936, Guillén joined the Communist Party the next year, traveled to Spain for a Congress of Writers and Artists, and covered the Spanish Civil War as a magazine reporter. Identifying as a Communist denied him a visa to enter the United States the following year, but he traveled widely during the next decades in South America, China, and Europe. In 1953, after being in Chile, he was refused re-entry to Cuba and spent five years in exile. He returned after the successful Cuban revolution of 1959. Starting in 1961, he served more than 30 years as president of the Unión Nacional de Escritores de Cuba, the National Cuban Writers' Union. Among his awards were the Stalin Peace Prize in 1954, the 1976 International Botev Prize, and Cuba's National Prize for Literature in 1983. The Nicolás Guillén scrapbook contains poems by Guillén; criticisms of his poetry; typescript and manuscript letters from Nicolás Guillén to Arthur Schomburg; the pamphlet "La poesía cubana de Nicolás Guillén [por] Regino E. Boti"' and the musical composition "Negro bembonson, letra de N. Guillén, musica de Eliseo Grenet." less

Papers reflecting Schomburg's endeavors as a writer and researcher, and collector and curator of books and manuscripts documenting black history and culture. Personal and professional papers, including correspondence and writings, and writings of others. Includes material relating to Schomburg's position as curator of the Schomburg Collection at the 135th St. branch of the New York Public Library, and to black literature, art, and history. Correspondents include John E. Bruce, Henrietta Buckmaster, W.E.B. Du Bois, Nicolás Guillén, W.C. Handy, Langston Hughes, Charles S. Johnson, James W. Johnson, Claude McKay, J.A. Rogers, Albert A. Smith, Sténio Vincent (President of Haiti), Walter White, and Carter G. Woodson. Other papers include programs, news clippings, invitations, announcements, and minutes of a variety of organizations, such as the New York Urban League, New York Public Library, Young Men's Christian Association, and several black cultural and educational groups. Also, transcriptions of eighteenth and nineteenth century historical documents pertaining to black history and culture. less