A Posthumous History of Jos Mart

A Posthumous History of Jos Mart: The Apostle and His Afterlife focuses on Marts posthumous legacy and his lasting influence on succeeding generations of Cubans on the island and abroad. Over 120 years after his death on a Cuban battlefield in 1895, Mart studies have long been the contested property of opposing sides in an ongoing ideological battle. Both the Cuban nation-state, which claims Mart as a crucial inspiration for its Marxist revolutionary government, and diasporic communities in the US who honor Mart as a figure of hope for the Cuban nation-in-exile, insist on the centrality of his words and image for their respective visions of Cuban nationhood. The book also explores more recent scholarship that has reassessed Marts literary, cultural, and ideological value, allowing us to read him beyond the Havana-Miami axis toward engagement with a broader historical and geographical tableau. Mart has thus begun to outgrow his mutually-reinforcing cults in Cuba and the diaspora, to assume his true significance as a hemispheric and global writer and thinker.