80 | The Hemingway Review

Ernest Hemingway, A Cuban Exile

Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera
Universidad de Puerto Rico, Mayagüez

“A home isn’t just where you are, it’s who you are.” —Julie Beck1

A
principal task of literary scholarship is to ask questions about the
power of literature: what are its shaping effects, origins, and resourc-
es? What are its consequences? How did the author’s experiences
and surroundings contribute to the themes, tone, setting, use of language and
construction of character? Inasmuch as the words themselves are crucibles of
this experience, Hemingway believed certain places are key components of the
writing process: if an author’s location sets the terms of their imagination, and
therefore of their words, Hemingway’s writing has a special kinship to the re-
gions where he chose to live and to work—a kinship to Cuba, especially, where
his work is part of the local canon.
Many factors arguably connect Hemingway more to Cuba than to the
U.S.—especially in the second half of his life—some of these include linguistic
tendencies, intellectual experiences, cultural interests, as well as his own com-
ments on the topic. Ernest Hemingway described himself as the “first Cuban”
to receive the award in the only interview he gave after the announcement for
the Nobel Prize for Literature. As literary studies evolve, every so often they
bump up against incongruencies that cannot be resolved using existing meth-
ods. Chief among the present challenges in Hemingway studies as a practice is
the yet central role of methodological transnationalism—or in Hemingway’s
case, the overreliance on “American” without hyphenation as a primary (and
for some scholars, the only) way to understand his work and life experience.
This is a tendency that matches what Julie Beck calls “the dominant West-
ern viewpoint,” which maintains “that regardless of location, the individual
remains unchanged” (1).
Many studies show that this concept should be rethought. While Literary
Studies have been slower to address this, in fields as varied as cognitive psy-
chology, social theory, and cultural neuroscience, the conventional geographic
and cultural boundaries used to classify people have lost some of their appeal.
The effects are temporary; their limits are leaky, and they overlap with one an-
other and suggest too many complexities. When geographic terms arise, words
like “here” and “there” engage physical spaces, but they also concern identi-

The Hemingway Review, Vol. 42, No. 1, Fall 2022. Copyright © 2022
The Ernest Hemingway Foundation.
 Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera | 81

ties: “I” and “we” implicitly recreate themselves and the limits of “they.” While
these boundaries are perhaps best characterized by malleability (especially for
migrants, like Ernest Hemingway), the traditional critical presumptions com-
monly bind authors to their places of origin in ways that conceal other fac-
tors. What other factors? Many relate to a person’s immediate circumstances
and the languages they use. As Vamsi Koneru notes, “People score differently
on cognition tests; tell stories differently; name their communities differently;
and self-identify differently depending upon where they are, with whom they
are speaking, and in what language” (qtd. in Herlihy-Mera 2022, 150).
Hemingway’s self-identification as “cubano” and “not a Yankee”2 should
play a more important role in understanding how the last months of his life
unfolded in the U.S. Considering him a Caribbean writer means he was at
home in Cuba, and as per his own words “Cuban.” San Francisco de Paula was
where he chose to be; it was where he was most comfortable. While he was
eventually forced to leave the island, his intention was to return and ultimately
die there; he planned to be buried beneath a sacred ceiba tree at his home. The
instant it was clear he faced a permanent exile from Cuba—during the Bay of
Pigs Invasion—his mental state declined precipitously. The invasion may have
been a trigger event: just hours after he learned of the attack, he made his first
suicide attempt. His death came not long after.
The World Health Organization has examined how forced displacement
impacts mental health, noting that there is also “consistent evidence that the
incidence of psychoses is higher among” people who are forced from their
homes (“Mental Health and Forced Displacement” 1). In such straits, the “loss
of status, loss of social network, and acculturation and thwarted ambition”
have been shown to be “triggers for suicidal behavior” (Forte et al. 1+). While
Hemingway’s reverse culture shock in the US has received little attention, it
was clear he was under incredible stress while far from his home, a circum-
stance that “can cause or worsen depression and … stress disorder, and may
contribute to suicidal thoughts” (Henderson 1+). Hemingway’s status may be
compared to other Cuban exiles who were experiencing the same strife: “Cu-
ban exiles,” as Jennifer Lambe notes, suffer from a “distressing suicide rate,”
one that is “notably higher … than other immigrant groups” (226, 289).
Many scholars have noted the importance of Hemingway’s literature in the
life and writing of Guillermo Cabrera Infante,3 an iconoclast author and son
of the founders of the Cuban Communist Party. Cabrera Infante’s book Mea
Cuba has a section that considers exile, suicide, Cubanness and Revolution as
82 | The Hemingway Review

interrelated. In a chapter titled, “Notes on an Ideology of Suicide,” he writes,

“The practice of suicide is the only and, of course definitive Cuban ideology. It
is a rebellious ideology, the permanent rebellion.” He concludes these remarks
with several parenthetical phrases, one of which is a line (“Cuban, to die by
one’s own hand,” my translation) that he adds to the Cuban National Anthem:
“(One hears, one will always hear, the notes of the National Anthem, sung by
a distant choir of voices from beyond the grave: ‘Cuban, to die by one’s own
hand / That to die for the country is to die.’)”4 These words first appeared in
print a decade after Hemingway’s death.
Building on the “Hemingway in Cuban Contexts: Revisiting Reaches of his
Imagination,” by Carlos A. Peón Casas, and “Fathering Under the Influence:
Hemingway’s Representation of His Sons in ‘Bimini,’” by Gregory Stephens,
the article in this section examines the Caribbean influences on Hemingway’s
life and sensibility through the viewpoint of a scholar who is uniquely in touch
with Cuban culture. The late Enrique Cirules’s article, “Ernest Hemingway and
the Faded Fame of Antonio Gattorno,” interprets Hemingway’s attentive role
in the life of a notable artist, Antonio Gattorno. Cirules maintains that Gat-
torno’s work has been neglected (he is largely absent from the Cuban canon)
due in part to his move to the U.S. As Hemingway strongly recommended that
Gattorno emigrate, citing the benefits of extra-culture-of-origin perspectives,
the subsequent events in the artist’s life may have links to Hemingway’s guid-
ance, which hinged on the role of place, distance, and migration in creative
perception. Citing at length an article that Hemingway published in Esquire in
support of Gattorno, Circules’s work provides many thoughtful reflections on
the ways migration, aesthetics, language, identity, and wealth converge in both
visual and literary art forms.
The new scholarship on Hemingway in Cuba, in this issue as well as in other
settings, brings important attention to Hemingway’s intercultural responsive-
ness and identification. The range of scholars working across languages and
literary traditions on the same subject gives studies in this vein a unique flavor,
one that in a sense parallels the assortment of traditions and customs that were
interwoven in Hemingway’s life. A critical focus on the shaping influences of
migration in Hemingway’s worldview, as well as the influence he has left in
Cuba, make clear that the cultures, languages, traditions, and ways of life in
San Francisco de Paula were not sites of exoticism or alterity in Hemingway
life, but rather, they were sources comfort and ease that he associated with
“home.”
 Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera | 83

Note: One of the most important Cuban critics of the last century, En-
rique Cirules was the author of Hemingway en Cuba, Hemingway, ese descono-
cido and Hemingway en la cayería de Romano, among many other books and
essays. Always cordial and insightful, his final email to me concluded with the
words, “Hemingway es uno de los verdaderamente grandes.” He died in 2016. 

This article is dedicated to his memory.

NOTES

1 “The Psychology of Home: Why Where You Live Means So Much.” The Atlantic 30 December
2011: 1+.
2 In the early part of the Cuban Revolution, Hemingway said, “Vamos a ganar. Nosotros, los cuba-
nos, vamos a ganar. I’m not a Yankee, you know” (qtd. in Doval 127). When he received the Nobel
Prize for Literature, an important comment in the only interview he gave was “soy el primero [sic]
cubano sato a ganar este premio” (see Herlihy-Mera 2017).
3 Cabrera Infante, who was raised in Gibara and lived many years in London, once called himself
“the only English writer working in Spanish” (qtd. in Weiss 2003, 180). For more on his influence
on Hemingway, see Jason Weiss’s The Lights of Home, Terry Peavler’s “Guillermo Cabrera Infante’s
Debt to Ernest Hemingway” and Sarah Driscoll’s “‘Singular Ties of Intimacy’: The Inter-American
Imagination in Ernest Hemingway and Guillermo Cabrera Infante’s Cuban Works.”
4 The original text read: “Notas sobre una ideología del suicidio” and “La práctica del suicidio “es la
única, y por supuesto, definitiva ideología cubana. Una ideología rebelde, la rebeldía permanente
por el perenne suicidio.” And the conclusión: “(Se oyen, se oirán siempre, las notas del Himno
Nacional, cantado por un coro lejano de voces de ultratumba: ‘Cubano, a morir por propia mano
/ Que morir por la patria es morir.’)”

WORKS CITED

Beck, Julie. “The Psychology of Home: Why Where You Live Means So Much.” The Atlantic, 30
December 2011, pp. 1+.
Cabrera Infante, Guillermo. Mea Cuba. Alfaguara, 1992.
Doval, Hernán. No te hagas historia. Ediciones RHJA, 2007.
Forte, Alberto, Federico Trobia, Flavia Gualtieri, Dorian Lamis, Giuseppe Cardamone, Vincenzo
Giallonardo, Andrea Fiorillo, Paolo Girardi and Maurizio Pompili. “Suicide Risk among
Immigrants and Ethnic Minorities: A Literature Overview.” Environmental Research and Public
Health, 8 July 2018, pp 1+.
Henderson, Tim. “An Immigrant Community Haunted by Suicide.” Stateline, 17 July 2018, pp. 1+.
Herlihy-Mera, Jeffrey. “Cuba in Hemingway.” The Hemingway Review, vol. 36 no. 2, 2017, pp. 8-41.
—. Decolonizing American Spanish: Eurocentrism and Foreignness in the Imperial Ecosystem. U of
Pittsburgh P, 2022.
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“Mental Health and Forced Displacement.” Facts Sheets, The World Health Organization, 31 August
2021, p, 1+.
Lambe, Jennifer. Madhouse: Psychiatry and Politics in Cuban History. U of North Carolina P, 2016.
Weiss, Jason. The Lights of Home: A Century of Latin American Writers in Paris. Routledge, 2003.
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