Haydee Santamaria - Cuban R, Sandino's daughters, Che on My Mind, To change the world, The Rhizome As a Field
Years active
circa 1959 to present
Insight new mexico margaret randall
Margaret Randall (born December 6, 1936, New York City, USA) is an American-born writer, photographer, activist and academic. Born in New York City, she lived for many years in Spain, Mexico, Cuba, and Nicaragua, and spent time in North Vietnam during the last months of the U.S. war in that country. She has written extensively on her experiences abroad and back in the United States, and has taught at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and other colleges.
Randall moved to Mexico in the 1960s, married the mexican poet Sergio Mondragón and gave up her American citizenship. She moved to Cuba in 1969, where she deepened her interest in women's issues and wrote oral histories of mainly women, "want[ing] to understand what a socialist revolution could mean for women, what problems it might solve and which leave unsolved." Her 2009 memoir To Change The World: My Years in Cuba chronicle that period of her life. She lived in Managua, Nicaragua, from 1980 to 1984, writing about Nicaraguan women, and returned to the United States after an absence of 23 years.
Shortly after her return in 1984, she was ordered deported under the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952. The government’s case rested on two arguments. First, while living in Mexico and married to a Mexican citizen, she had taken out Mexican citizenship, thereby presumably losing her U.S. citizenship. This was in 1967. In addition, under McCarran-Walter, the government claimed that the opinions Randall expressed in several of her books were "against the good order and happiness of the United States". The INS district director gave the justification that "her writings go far beyond mere dissent". With the support of many well-known writers and others, Randall won a Board of Immigration Appeals case in 1989 ordering the INS to grant her adjustment of status to permanent residence.
Among her best-known books are Cuban Women Now, Sandino’s Daughters, Sandino’s Daughters Revisited, and When I Look into the Mirror and see You: Women, Terror and Resistance (all oral history with essay).
Recent books include Che On My Mind (essay), The Rhizome as a Field of Broken Bones (poetry), and Haydée Santamaría, Cuban Revolutionary: She Led by Transgression (essays), .To Change the World: My Years in Cuba (memoir, with photos), Narrative of Power and First Laugh (essay), and Stones Witness, Their Backs to the Sea, My Town, Something's Wrong with the Cornfields, and Ruins (poems, with photos), and As If the Empty Chair / Como si la silla vacía (poems in tribute to the disappeared of Latin America, in bilingual edition, translations by Leandro Katz and Diego Guerra).
The desert of the U.S. Southwest is her spiritual home, and ancient ruins—here and in other parts of the world—are increasingly her greatest source of inspiration.
Works
Her writings include:
Randall, Margaret (1959). Giants of Tears: and Other Poems. Tejon Press.
——; De Kooning, Elaine (1961). Ecstasy is a number: Poems. Orion Press.
—— (1965). October. Ediciones el Corno Emplumado.
—— (1967). Water I Slip into at Night: Poems. Printed at Talleres Avelar y de la Parra.
—— (1967). 25 stages of my spine. Elizabeth Press.
—— (1 January 1975). Los Hippies: Expresión de una Crisis (Volume 11 of Colección mínima). Siglo Veintiuno. ISBN 978-968-23-0777-5.
—— (1968). So many rooms has a house, but one roof. New Rivers Press.
——; Mondragón, Sergio (1969). El Corno emplumado, Issue 31.
—— (1973). Part of the solution: portrait of a revolutionary. New Directions.
——; Slipka, Yvonne (1974). Cuban Women Now: Interview with Cuban Women. Women's Press.
—— (1974). With Our Hands. New Star Books.
—— (1975). Sprit of The People. New Star Books.
—— (1978). Estos cantos habitados. Colorado State Review Press.
—— (1978). Carlota: Prose & poems from Havana. ISBN 9780919888814.
——; Tijerino, Doris (1978). Inside the Nicaraguan Revolution. ISBN 9780919888845.
—— (1978-06-01). We. ISBN 9780918266101.
——; Moreno, Angel Antonio (1 January 1979). Sueños y realidades del Guajiricantor. Siglo XXI. pp. 105–. ISBN 978-968-23-0536-8.
—— (1980). No se puede hacer la revolución sin nosotras.
—— (1980). Todas estamos despiertas: Testimonios de la mujer nicaragüense de hoy. ISBN 9789682310119.
——; Janda, Judy (1981). Women in Cuba: 20 Years Later. ISBN 9780918266149.
—— (1975). Spirit of the people. New Star Books. ISBN 978-0-919888-58-6.
—— (1982). Breaking the silences: an anthology of 20th-century poetry by Cuban women. Pulp Press. ISBN 978-0-88978-106-1.
—— (1983). Christians in the Nicaraguan revolution. ISBN 9780919573154.
—— (1984). A Poetry of Resistance: Selected Poems and Prose from Central America.
—— (1995-07-01). Risking a Somersault in the Air: Conversations with Nicaraguan Writers. Solidarity Publications. ISBN 9780915306923.; Northwestern University Press, 1995, ISBN 9780915306923
—— (May 1985). Women brave in the face of danger: photographs of and writings by Latin and North American women. Crossing Press. ISBN 978-0-89594-162-6.
—— (1985). Testimonios: A Guide to Oral History.
—— (1985). Cristianos en la revolución: Del testimonio a la lucha.
—— (1 January 1986). The Coming Home Poems. LongRiver Books. ISBN 978-0-942986-04-4.
—— (1986). Albuquerque: Coming Back to the U.S.A. New Star Books, Limited. ISBN 978-0-919573-53-6.
—— (1 June 1987). This is about incest. Firebrand Books. ISBN 978-0-932379-29-0.
——; Robert E. Schweitzer (1988). Photographs by Margaret Randall: Image and Content in Differing Cultural Contexts. The Museum.
——; Hubbard, Ruth (1988). The shape of red: Insider/outsider reflections. ISBN 9780939416189.
Randall, Margaret (1 January 1989). Las mujeres. Siglo XXI. ISBN 978-968-23-1583-1.
—— (1990). Coming Home: Peace Without Complacency. ISBN 0931122570.
—— (1992-09-01). Dancing with the Doe: New and Selected Poems 1986-1991. ISBN 9780931122705.
—— (1992). Gathering rage: The failure of twentieth century revolutions to develop a feminist agenda. Monthly Review Press. ISBN 085345860X.
—— (1 June 1992). The Old Cedar Bar. Illustrator E. J. Gold. Gateways Books & Tapes. ISBN 978-0-89556-092-6.
—— (1981). Sandino's Daughters: Testimonies of Nicaraguan Women in Struggle. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0-8135-2214-2.
—— (1988-03-01). Memory says yes. ISBN 9780915306770.
—— (1994). Sandino's Daughters Revisited: Feminism in Nicaragua. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0-8135-2025-4.
—— (1981). Sandino's Daughters: Testimonies of Nicaraguan Women in Struggle. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0-8135-2214-2.
—— (1996). The Price You Pay: The Hidden Cost of Women's Relationship to Money. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-91204-4.