Carmen Alea Paz Papers

Carmen Alea Paz (d. 2016) was a poet, columnist, professor, and author who facilitated social change through her writing, which advocated for women to pursue traditionally male-dominated professional careers in the 1940’s and 50’s. She was born in Havana, Cuba in June of 1926.

In pre-Revolutionary Cuba, she wrote extensively for popular magazines such as Lux, Romances, Vanidades, Bazar, and Colorama and major newspapers of the era including Avance, El País, El Mundo, and the famous Diario de la Marina. Many of her articles highlighted the role of women in modern Cuban society. She also published poetry. In August 1943, Alea Paz wrote an essay on María Sklodowska Curie who protested against tsarism in Poland in the magazine Lux. This is an example of the anti-totalitarian thought that Alea Paz was a proponent of in her works. Another illustration is the poem “Inconformidad” published in El Diario de La Marina’s “Esquina del Poeta” (Poet’s Corner) on Sunday July 6,1958.

She married Carlos Paz in Havana in 1955. In January of 1962, Alea Paz and her husband left Cuba. They settled in the area of Los Angeles, California. Upon arriving in Los Angeles, Alea Paz earned a Master’s of Arts in English from California State University at Northridge. She later taught there as a professor of Spanish language and literature, as well as teaching classes at other colleges in the area. She continued to write, producing essays, critiques, poetry in Spanish and English and short stories in Spanish and English for newspapers and magazines such as La Opinión, Contact Magazine, La Voz Libre in Los Angeles; Diario de las Américas, Gaceta Lírica in Miami; Thought in Tampa; Círculo de Cultura, and Círculo Poético of Verona, New Jersey. She did translation work for a variety of projects including the book by Hill Chapin If you have kids, then be a parent! (¡Si usted tiene niños, entonces sea padre!), and videos for instance “Dive, dive, dive” (Directo al Fondo.)

In 1992, her career as a literary writer and poet took off, with the publication of her first book of poetry El caracol y el tiempo. In 1993 she was awarded the Enrique Labrador Ruiz International Short Story Award. In 1996, she published a novella plus short stories called El veranito de María Isabel y cuentos para insomnes rebeldes, which was published by Ponce de León press, and in 1999 she won the Dr. Alberto Gutiérrez de la Solana International Unpublished Novel Contest, sponsored by the Pan American Culture Circle of New Jersey. In 2001, she won the Alberto Gutiérrez de la Solana International Prize from the Pan American Culture Circle for her novel about the exile condition called Labios sellados. She also won a prize for a poem about the Cuban apostle José Martí called “El hombre de la rosa blanca” (The man of the white rose):

“Tu verbo claro, luminoso, armado/ con razones de honor y de justicia,/ de libertad clamaba la primicia/ para tu amado pueblo esclavizado. “En el cual se sigue proyectando el interés de la autora por la palabra como arma y expresión de la libertad humana y de su derecho a ser”.

In 2004, her novel Casino azul was published by the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California Sur. She also produced a family story called Risas, confeti y serpentinas. Her work has also appeared in collections of Cuban exile literature such as Narrativa y libertad (Cuban stories of the diaspora) published by Ediciones Universal of Miami in 1996 and in Trayectoria de la mujer cubana by Concepción Teresa Alzola, published in 2009 by Ediciones Universal. She continued to submit and publish poems in digital format through 2012. She also donated an unpublished manuscript by José Martí called Pensamientos to the University of Miami Cuban Heritage Collection, which Martí is said to have written in New York at the end of the 19th century and given to his secretary Gonzalo de Quesada. She was presented with the manuscript due to her own work on Martí at the Martiano Seminary of the University of Havana directed by Gonzalo Quesada y Miranda. The authenticity of the manuscript was certified by the Cuban essayist and Cuban historian Carlos Ripoll, considered one of the most important experts on Martí.