EDITH VAZQUEZ


Depestre is also sometimes known), I wanted to be sure not to speak for
or in her place. I did not presume that her stories took place at Alamar
or that they necessarily rendered Alamar in any way. Though Alamar is
the most important center of Cuban hip hop culture at the present time,
and Depestre does participate in this culture, the connection between
her fiction and her neighborhood is not a simple one.
 Depestre herself redirects political questions, and in fact disdains
writing about Alamar or Cuba through any of the lenses of sociology,
realism or politics. Her stories override academic and political
categories. The political map, it seems, is already fixed and at times
densely occupied; artistic expression must need to surface outside of
the well-rehearsed polemics of United States-Cuban politics. Important
to consider is the fact that Depestre belongs to the generation of Cubans
living out their youthful years during the present "special period" of
economic stringency and the U.S. embargo. When she does take up
the subject of the special period for discussion, her mother is quick to
remind her that she lacks direct knowledge of a pre-revolutionary Cuba.
Such a conversation between two generations of Cubans mirrors the
conversation that the North American hip hop generation conducts in
the United States. North American hip hop does not satisfy itself with
depicting and decrying life in U.S. barrios or ghettos. In hip hop's
rebuttal to these conditions, it defies a prescriptive political expression
defined and promulgated by parental figures. Even when both
generations agree that marginalization marks a community context,
hip hop voices the aspirations and priorities of younger generations
as they differ from and contradict those esteemed by older family
members. Hip hop's insistence on forging innovative arts and
"sciences" (a hip hop term referring to cultural and analytical ingenuity
and methods) is perhaps its most consistent poetics.
 In this essay, I suggest that hip hop has not only marked material
culture with richness and variety, but has effected an epistemological
shift in contemporary society and literature. I intend this essay to be
a small contribution to the field of Cuban hip hop literature. I titled
this collaborative essay "Contando Contigo" because the writer,
Depestre, and I relied on one another to accomplish a literary dialogue
about hip hop fiction an emerging genre of print literature. Part I of
this essay is an author interview. Part II of this essay is the full text of
Depestre's short story "Abikf," which I argue partly demonstrates hip
hop aesthetics. In Part III is a critical reflection. And Part IV is a
selection of Depestre's statements about hip hop and her fiction. Lastly,
Part V is a bibliography of pertinent books and articles relevant to hip
hop discourses and theories.