Gustavo Pérez Firmat

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He was born in Cuba and emigrated to the United States to the city of Miami in 1960, when he was only 11 years old. He graduated from Miami-Dade College and the University of Miami. He is a writer who manages to write in both English and Spanish and therefore his works have been published in both languages.

He received his doctorate in Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan, and taught at Duke University (1978-1999). He is currently the David Feinson Professor of Humanities at Columbia University.

His books have been very successful, such as Next Year in Cuba (Doubleday 1995, 2000) and its Spanish version El año que viene estamos en Cuba (Arte Público, 1997); Life in the Hyphen (Texas, 1994), which received the Eugene M. Kayden University Press National Book Award (1994), and the Spanish version Vidas en vilo (Colibrí, 2000); Cincuenta lecciones de exilio y desexilio (Universal, 2000), and others.

Pérez Firmat responded that for him there is no greater satisfaction than the recognition of his own, and with this he was referring to the Premio Emilia Bernal awarded in 2012. "The reason is that Cubans know what pains me and what brings me joy," he commented. His family were businesspeople in Cuba. "I was born with the soul of a warehouse keeper, but I ended up being a professor, which is more than a destiny, it is madness."

His theme, Exile and Untimeliness was mostly about aging, which is also a type of exile. In a historical sense, the time of exiles is an untimeliness, he explained. You can no longer return to the homeland of your parents because your parents are buried here. "The aging of exile is also aging in exile, and when it lasts for decades it is a chronic condition," he continued, in a series of meditations on the exile.

When he arrived, Pérez Firmat was 11 years old, now he is 63, that is three-quarters of his life in exile, so he considers himself a survivor of a country that no longer exists. Before he was "an exiled Cuban," now he is "a Cuban exile." Each exile reaches a point of no return, as happens with airplanes. One must ask what one's own is, he posed. "When my father died, 10 years ago, there was no return for my father," he explained. "We are not to blame for being born in Cuba, as Albita says, but we are for what happened there." He concluded by saying that those who have come now are emigrants, they do not feel like exiles. "Exile is not transmitted, we are the last generation of exiles, we are prehistoric beings."

He was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1995. He has been elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

A distinguished poet, novelist and university professor, Gustavo Pérez Firmat is known, above all, for his essay work. Books such as Literature and Liminality, The Cuban Condition, Vidas en vilo and Cincuenta lecciones de exilio y desexilio have earned him a solid reputation in the academic world of the United States, where his provocative judgments tend to stir up controversy.