Lydia Cabrera’s early Afro-Cuban folklore publications

Record summary

Lydia Cabrera’s early collections, beginning with Contes nègres de Cuba (1936), presented Afro-Cuban stories and religiously inflected narratives in French and later Spanish contexts. They are relevant to research on transmission, translation, publishing and the boundary between folktale and sacred narrative. The material includes named beings and traditions that can be compared across Caribbean cultures, but it is not a set of independently verified supernatural reports. Researchers should consult original editions and later scholarship on Cabrera’s informants, editorial shaping and collection methods.