Cuba: the conundrum of the Caribbean still. Few countries its size can claim so many outstanding writers and artists. Even fewer have succeeded in alienating nearly all of them. Most of the best and the brightest of Cuba are in exile. The exodus, begun two decades ago, has accelerated in the last two years. Three of the island's leading writers— Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Octavio Armand, and Reinaldo Arenas—offer different perspectives on the pain and challenge of exile, on the Revolution, and on Cuba's rich and varied contribution to the present cultural renaissance of Latin America.

When Party Chairman Hu Yao-bang chose the centennial of China's famous author Lu Hsun (1881-1936) to launch a condemnation of the “bourgeois liberalism” among China's contemporary writers, he acted within an established tradition of the Communist party to claim Lu Hsun as its own. In 1939, three years after Lu Hsun's death, Mao Tse-tung issued a statement praising “Lu Hsun the Communist, the giant of China's cultural Revolution,” ignoring the fact that the writer never joined the Party and never accepted the precepts of Marx and Lenin.

Born Chou Shu-jen, Lu Hsun received a classical education, revealing an early affinity for books and art. He entered the Kiangnan Naval Academy and shortly thereafter transferred to the Army Academy, both in Nanking. Here he was introduced to translations of Western literature, notably the works of Charles Darwin and Thomas Huxley.

The urgency of our times has engendered demands for action, and action has followed: economic, political, diplomatic. We are concerned for the technical competence of those who are acting. But surely there are other and even more fundamental concerns. Action too easily distracts from the assumptions on which action is based. Many of those assumptions are born in that dark region of the popular imagination where nations define themselves in terms of basic myths of national mission and national identity. We are tempted by, and too easily succumb to, oversimple versions of those myths. Urgent as is our need for action, we need reflection more.

The basic instrument of reflection on national identity and mission is literature, and ours is incredibly rich, Literature has helped both to shape and to reveal that obscure popular imagination and has criticized the ways it has shaped itself.