Rubén Rodríguez is one of the most recognized names among Cuban storytellers. Deserving of such important awards as the short story in La Gaceta de Cuba or Alejo Carpentier, also in this genre, Rubén has the ability to continue being an excellent storyteller when the recipient of his work is the non-adult audience; and just about his deliveries to the universe of Cuban children's and youth literature (LIJ) we are talking today.

In issue 16 of 2016 of Chinchila magazine , Joel Franz Rosell pours his reflections on the narrative in the Cuban LIJ. In his "little pearl necklace", Rosell notes: " Dangerous green meadows with black and white cows , by Rubén Rodríguez González, seems to me the most inventive (...) and fun children's novel written by a Cuban so far in the 21st century". What has been the path traveled for your work to deserve these accolades? What references of the LIJ do you recognize in your writing?

I started at the LIJ in 2005, with the noveleta Mi mundo , a notebook that today seems faulty to me and that I would rewrite if possible. This shows me that it is not possible to undertake the writing of an epic fantasy project without first having developed a writing plan, without inventing a world with its geography, races, flora and fauna, climates, history, mythology and religion. With this I am not denying my first children's book, but hardly reflecting on it. Two later volumes, set in that sort of world parallel to the Earth, accessed through space-time tunnels, enjoy better planning: The country of the tatai (winner of the Ismaelillo Prize from Uneac and published by Unión), and The Kingdom of Joy(in editorial process by Gente Nueva).
Then the first volume of a saga that has given me great satisfaction and that has autobiographical overtones was born : El garrancho de Garabulla , which won the Holguín City Prize and is the story of a peasant who wants to be a writer; followed by others, born of speculation about the future of the story and the evolution of its characters: Paca Chacón and modern education (Oriente Prize, published by that publisher), Rebeca Remedio and the most unbearable children in the world (Prize April and published by that publishing house and by Oriente) and La retataranieta del vikingo, which was also released by Ediciones Oriente, a label with which I have agreed on the entire collection. Now I am writing the fifth installment: Garrancho, the film , a sort of tribute to the world of cinema and I gave Ediciones Cauce, from Pinar del Río, a kind of "prequel" entitled Cuentos de Garabulla , which narrates some background.

The third series is that of Leidi Jámilton, a witch who is a single mother of two peculiar boys: a transparent child and a mutant, the father, a Scottish piper turned urban legend, and the grandmother Cachita, heir to the entire collection, complete the circle. Cuban rural. If the garranchoextols the value of friendship and family as well as the importance of tenacity to achieve goals; Leidi J.'s books are a hymn to acceptance, tolerance and optimism, and in terms of their references, they are a more complex product, by virtue of their intertextuality. The first of them, The Wonderful World Journey Around Leidi Jámilton , winner of the Hermanos Loynaz award, was followed by a higher volume in its approaches and aesthetic proposal, Dangerous green meadows with black and white cows, which is my luckiest book: it won the Golden Age, The White Rose and Literary Criticism awards. Later, Gente Nueva compiled both notebooks for its Collection 21, with more than a dozen unpublished stories, which were published with the same title as the first installment of the series. Then a beautiful book appeared by Ediciones La Luz: The end of happy endings , with stories somewhat more pretentious in terms of its narrative proposal. Another work set in the world of the Jámiltons: To bewitch the baby and other spells , by Ediciones Matanzas, is due to be published soon .
Without being immodest, I recognize the logical growth after three decades creating for that demanding public that are children; a growth that has not been spontaneous, but the result of training, the will to style and the relationship with the recipient of these books. I think that, along with fantasy, knowledge of grammar and writing, the exercise of syntax, the study of narrative techniques and a good dose of humility are vital and, above all, thinking about the receiving public.
My readings in the field of LIJ have been random, with which I have "lost" some authors considered paradigms and I have adored others less relevant. Fundamentally, as a narrative reader, I am looking for a good story beautifully told, though not "rich" with poetry. I detest the stupidity, the pedestrian, the vulgar and the didacticism at all costs. Remember, for example, that Onelio Jorge Cardoso, the greatest storyteller, was not rustic despite writing about the Cuban countryside.
As references, I suppose, I must recognize my multiple readings: Rompetacones , by Antoniorrobles; Nadasabeby Nikolai Nosov; the traditional tales from which Vladimir Propp drew his famous performances and the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault took his famous stories; the fables of Aesop and Samaniego; the Cuban editions of Oros Viejos and Flor de leyendas compiled by Herminio Almendros; to the "advanced" Nordic authors and even Once upon a time, whose stories are a wonder of synthesis. I do not rule out Soviet slide films, the famous "rolls", with which I enjoyed many stories to which I put effects and sound. And there are also all the great adventure books written for adults and that children and young people took for themselves, such as the texts of Alexander Dumas (father), Jonathan Swift, Emilio Salgari and Jules Verne, and even The Thousand and One Nights with its huge erotic load. Of course, I must mention Lewis Carroll, not only with the Alice stories, but with his Phantasmagoria; the Victorian tales of Oscar Wilde and Tolkien's world. Hidden, out of modesty, those famous books and authors that I didn't like or still like. If, as someone wrote, the lion is made of digested lamb; I am made of devoured literature.

How much does being born in Floro Pérez influence your creation for children? (or San Marcos, if you want to clarify).

No more than the way their respective circumstances have influenced other authors. Being born in that town in the middle of the field must have influenced my childhood and adolescence experiences, those that later appear filtered or recreated in my books. Perhaps, had I developed in another medium, my stories were more " urban" or " city-bound", or I would have other ethical or aesthetic concerns.
Anyway, my universe, even in that semi-rural environment, was far from being exclusively bucolic, because then my mind traveled through other places distant in time and space, those recreated in the fascinating stories of Flor de leyendas and Oros viejo , for example; or the courtly intrigues ofThe Three Musketeers or The Prisoner of Zenda ; or the exotic stories, full of eroticism and what seemed like humor to me, collected in The Thousand and One Nights . In fact, my first readings were Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book and Cindy, Yogi and Boo Boo , a huge book based on cartoons by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. At night, my father would tell us about the Tarzan and Superman dolls, his idols, and he promised me that he would be a Walt Disney cartoonist. All that "substance" survives in the writer Rubén.
I think that having grown up listening to peasant stories, including those of the dead and the appeared, contained in the popular imagination of San Marcos de Auras, also influenced me; and, in addition, having had a fabulous school library within reach, with accommodating librarians who allowed me to peek into the shelves intended for adults, where I found wonderful atlases of art history, human anatomy or history of shipping and aviation. When other children, I suppose, read The Little Prince, I was dazed by The Iliad or Daphnis and Chloe, or with the ancient history books that brought me closer to Babylon and Assyria or the Aztecs, Mayans and Incas. All this in "Floro Pérez", in the shadow of Cerro San Marcos and at the foot of the parish of Jesús del Monte.
My town and its surroundings, with its many experiences, trips to the farm of grandparents or uncles, excursions to the river, the rich indigenous flora and fauna are reflected in my literature, its environments and characters. Without going any further, when you travel from Holguín to Auras, you can see to the east a valley dotted by the hills of the Maniabón group and whose appearance is transfigured according to the time of day or the weather; hence the topography of a part of Mimundo is taken .

How do you manage to combine the exercise of journalism, narrative for adults and the universe of the LIJ? If you were to prepare a business card, how would you rank the following "professions" that identify you: journalist, college professor, adult storyteller, LIJ storyteller, good person, and best friend?

It is not difficult to combine the exercise of the three professions, since they have creativity in common, there are communicating vessels between them and the common support of the written text. I have worked for 28 years in a newspaper, as a reporter and later as an editor, experience that is synthesized in producing and correcting prose texts; journalism was a very good scriptural base and is excellent training when it comes to approaching the fictional text, also from the experiential; even as a teacher I teach journalistic genres and narrative techniques applied to journalistic text. On the "business card": good person and friend would go first, because basically we are sensitive human beings who realize ourselves in social, interpersonal interaction. It gives me great satisfaction to love and be loved, to help, understand, be happy and, at the same time, to be helped, understood and make my friends happy, if I can achieve it with my literature, my journalism or my teaching… all the better; but one is not born being "something" and sometimes we forget that, in addition to Ph D. or M. Sc. or award-winning author, we are children, siblings, uncles, parents, friends, neighbors ... ancestral emotional ties, historically and socially determined, and which are more durable than glories and appointments. If you still persist in making the card, here is my proposal: Good person, good friend, journalist, writer (without distinction) and teacher. neighbors ... ancestral emotional ties, determined historically and socially, and that are more durable than glories and appointments. If you still persist in making the card, here is my proposal: Good person, good friend, journalist, writer (without distinction) and teacher. neighbors ... ancestral emotional ties, determined historically and socially, and that are more durable than glories and appointments. If you still persist in making the card, here is my proposal: Good person, good friend, journalist, writer (without distinction) and teacher.

The poet Moses Mayán, your "cousin", said that " the writing of Reuben owns unison firepower of the howitzer and spring breath carnations', taking as reference for the image the Carnation Revolution in Portugal 1974. How to achieve in the field of LIJ that mixture of strength, beauty and poetry in the image? Is there the RR formula or method to try to achieve it and, incidentally, put readers in the pocket?

I think the key may lie in respecting the reader, in interacting with him, in knowing your audience and their circumstances; in being aware of who you are writing for and acting accordingly. You only have to write if you have something to say. You must deliver a good story, neatly crafted and ethically and aesthetically consistent. You have to propose to make your readers better, draw their attention to your own concerns and try to make them feel reflected in your texts. You must improve yourself as an author by studying the technique and honing your style in pursuit of better communication. You need to be honest in your approaches and sincere about the emotions and decisions of your characters, whom you must also love, respect and care for as an extension of yourself; delve into their motivations and be generous with them and with the reader. We must ensure logic and coherence in the texts. You need to read the classics and your contemporaries, to know the work that preceded you and to know what the current LIJ paths are, and thus avoid discovering the warm water one of these afternoon. More than a servant of your style, you must be his tenacious tamer. Your essential singularity and your references can incline in one direction your way of expressing yourself or the formal resources you use, but it is your will to style, as a creator, that sets your course. I believe that intentionality is the basis of everything, as those memorable dialogues of and thus avoid discovering the warm water one of these afternoon. More than a servant of your style, you must be his tenacious tamer. Your essential singularity and your references can incline in one direction your way of expressing yourself or the formal resources you use, but it is your will to style, as a creator, that sets your course. I believe that intentionality is the basis of everything, as those memorable dialogues of and thus avoid discovering the warm water one of these afternoon. More than a servant of your style, you must be his tenacious tamer. Your essential singularity and your references can incline in one direction your way of expressing yourself or the formal resources you use, but it is your will to style, as a creator, that sets your course. I believe that intentionality is the basis of everything, as those memorable dialogues ofAlice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass : «Which way to go? Depending on where you want to go. Or: "Here, you know, it is necessary to run as much as possible to stay in the same place."

It is striking that several of your protagonists are girls. Predilection, nods to LIJ big girls like Alicia and Pippa Longstocking?

I like female characters, I adore their psychology. Remember that "the hand that rocks the cradle is the one that rules the world." I think I take the construction of female characters more seriously, or maybe I am better at; because they have greater psychological wealth. I have also read that women have greater reasoning and communication skills.
Check out the protagonism in the classic stories, which have bequeathed us a true marathon of girls: Gretel, Gerda, Bella, Aurora, Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, the Little Mermaid, Princess Badrulbudur, renamed Jasmine by Disney, even Martina the cockroach and the mother Goat of the seven goats… And what about its magnificent antagonists: like the evil fairy -anonymous in the original story-, the Snow Queen and the collection of wicked witches and evil stepmothers? I suppose that, unintentionally, I am heir to that tradition, with Pippa and Alicia, Wendy and Mrs. Bartolotti, Dinka and Scheherazada. It is that even in the delicious story of the Matilda cow , by Edwiges Barroso, there is overwhelming female protagonism. All of them are antecedents of Érika, Laurita Domenech and Matilde Anycosa Jámilton. Go in my defense that I have male characters like Danito and Ibo Elke, from Mimundo ; Ernesto Escritor del Campo, in the Garabulla series; Rafa Piltrafa, in The country of the tatai ; or Maijiro Faetonte, in The Kingdom of Joy.

When El Garrancho de Garabulla appeared, did you already have in mind the writing of other books, or was it the good reception of this text that inspired you to return to its characters in new adventures?

The garrancho was born mysteriously. He had already published the novel Mimundo , which was a finalist for the Premio Oriente, and the idea of ​​writing a story about literary initiation was out there; Then I wrote a page with the dialogue between a girl and an author, who were anonymous then and which ended up being part of chapter three of El garrancho de Garabulla. He also had concerns about the way some professionals tend to treat beginners, forgetting that they ever were and believing themselves, in a quasi-mystical way, "uncreated" or "self-generated." I began writing it on December 31, when I got away from the hustle and bustle to start the novel, which I continued to write in the days that followed and finished in time to submit it to the contest in the Holguín City Prize, the contest that it had allowed my first storybook and my first adult novel to be published.
At first I did not set out to do the Garabulla series, nor did I have any more purpose than to try my luck with a second children's book; but it was, more than the good reception of the book, the "hunger for the future" of my characters, who kept demanding stories to live and adventures to face. As a good comic reader and consumer of series and soap operas, I got used to stories "by installments" since I was little, with all the traits that literature attributes to them. This is how Paca Chacón and modern education were born , where the villain returns as a kind of bizarre Doctor Moriarty and the story of Érika and her family is followed, based on the thesis proposed at the close of the previous book. It is enough to formulate a what if… I mean, what would happen if… Ernesto and Mami Maritza fell in love and Érika went to study at the multigrade school in Garabulla –I met the multigrade schools while working as a journalist in the mountains of Holguín-; or what would happen if ... Mami Maritza gave birth to twins, an argument by Rebeca Remedio and the most unbearable children in the world ; or what would happen if Érika's father appeared willing to take the girl with him, which is what The Viking's Great Great Granddaughter narrates . That same spirit has encouraged me to write the fifth and sixth installments. In principle, I only thought of writing six books: one for each grade of Primary that my protagonist attends, because adolescence would mean new conflicts for Érika, but who knows… What if ?
Garabulla's universe has also led me to other considerations. I don't know the word that scholars will use to refer to the "phenomenon", although it must be a compound word, full of Greek prefixes or suffixes. It is a kind of spider web, or communicating vessels that relate the three series, since Leidi is a native of Garabulla, where her mother and witch relatives live and the Jámilton children spend their vacations there. In this peaceful rural environment, on the other hand, there are space-time tunnels or "doors" that lead to Mimundo, as stated in the novel The Country of the Tatai, where characters from Garabulla's series break into that parallel universe during a bumpy vacation trip. I can't tell you what higher purpose drives me because I don't know if there is one, but I guarantee that I enjoy writing these stories too much to resist doing it over and over again.

Reality, fantasy. If, in the Ernesto Escritor del Campo saga and his garabullano universe, your protagonists live immersed in contemporaneity, in a real and recognizable universe in their environment for your readers, on the other hand, the Mimundo universe is full of strange creatures: goscas, alones , csbafas, winged violins, tatais, elkes, barujitas. How to achieve that balance between the reflection of reality that any child lives and the fantastic overflow and the creation of worlds?

I speak to you from my own experience, the experience of the child that I was. Although this phenomenon is not only linked to this stage of life, but it accompanies man in his steps on earth. Religious magical thinking is proof of this. No child lives completely in the real world, in it everyday circumstances and overflowing fantasy coexist. It is enough to contemplate several children playing to realize how tenuous the limits are between fantasy and reality. The child fables an "other" reality within the framework of reality, distributes roles in the game, invents adventures, faces adventures, makes his wishes come true, makes up friends. Fantasy is the highest form of thought. Have a pet, take a trip, bring back a loved one, possessing something desired ... none of this is impossible for the child's imagination. And I'm talking about "achievable" wishes. What to say then of what belongs to the dimension of the fantastic. I grew up in a peculiar environment and surrounded by people who were not very clear about the borders between the real and the imaginary and I suppose it influenced my way of seeing the world and life and assuming the literary fact. Visions, premonitions, sightings of a doubtful nature (a UFO, an angel, a ghost), paranormal experiences, poltergeist… all this is part of my family history. The "adult" world around me was like this, and my world is still like that. For this reason, in my literature there are no limits between Garabulla and Mimundo, because in my mind there is no wall between what seems fantastic and what we call real. Even there are two Garabulla,

The Viking's Great Great Daughter was one of the most widely read books last year. Are these statistics interesting to Rubén? Do you usually approach children to know their reaction to your texts?

I am interested in statistics to the extent that they indicate the acceptance, or not, of what I write. An author cannot live with his back to his audience, because literature is an individual act as creation, and its consumption is also individual, but it depends on processes of production, distribution and promotion that are eminently social. I am interested in interacting with my readers, knowing what they think about my books, what they liked, what they disliked, where they laughed out loud and where the anguish invaded them, because this gives me feedback on thematic and stylistic matters, and because I work a lot with emotions and I need to know if the emotion that illuminated a text is perceived by my audience. I am also concerned about the didactic part, and I need to know to what extent those reflections or life lessons, almost always implicit in the text, intended for children but without lecturing them, they have been apprehended. I especially liked what happened withThe Viking's great-granddaughter, as it was thought of as one more book in Garabulla's series, with the continuity of the classic conflict and the characters, and its own development turned it into a novel about affections, about family relationships, about parents and children.
Years ago, with the Holguin bookstore Villena-Botev, I carried out an itinerant club through the primary schools of the municipality of Holguín, the urban and rural, the downtown and the suburban, also those of special education. It is an excellent opportunity to interact with the children and see first-hand what they think about my stories. The presentations of my books are another way to be aware of what children and adults think. I think the need for interaction is determined by my journalistic profession, where systematic contact with the public is a no-brainer. In addition, I like to tell my stories orally, to tell stories to children and adults, I almost morbidly enjoy their reactions of hilarity, interest or horror, when it comes to the case. In times of hyperconnection and global village it is impossible to claim a nineteenth-century relationship with your readers; even the serial, as a form of popularization of literary distribution and consumption, comes from the nineteenth century ...

Literary criticism in Cuba walks with crutches, to put it delicately, and on many occasions red u c e a laudatory phrases. When talking about LIJ the picture is even more arid. What would you propose to solve this gigantic lagoon?

It is difficult to be judge and party. I am far from the classic ideal of the intellectual who writes various genres of literature and exercises literary criticism, because I basically lack a method. I leave the act of evaluating and judging what I write to others. I agree with you about the shortcomings and shortcomings of the exercise of artistic criticism in a general sense in our country. I think it happens, in many cases, due to the lack of a methodology for analysis and lack of professional background. In the case of the press, for example, Journalism study plans lack subjects that prepare journalists for the exercise of art criticism. The times that I approached artistic criticism, in my professional performance, it was empirically and out of daring; although armed with some notions and based on a general "self-managed" culture. The critic must be, I consider, a customary consumer of art, and also a consumer of art criticism, who provides him with models of approach to the artistic fact and keeps him up to date on artistic trends and the critic itself. You must be a cultured person and be informed and, in addition, be aware of the aesthetic value of the criticism itself, so that the article or essay becomes valuable textsper se , and even consumables as art. There are influencing conceptual factors, such as ignorance of the role of criticism in artistic promotion, as one of the actions that make up this system of socialization and validation of art. The scarcity of specialized publications or difficulties in the critic's access to them, the lack of space in the periodicals for the exercise of criteria, the lack of seriousness and commitment when addressing a literary event, which conditions the laudatory excess, also weighs down. lacking analysis and assessment. Or the scarce professional and material incentive to carry out the criticism or assume the office of critic.

You have spoken inextensively about what you have written (published or about to be released). What would Rubén not write at the LIJ?

I would not write about what I do not believe. I would not write to hurt or deceive. I would not write if inspiration did not assist me. I would not write for fashion and trend. I would not write anything devoid of aesthetic intention. I would not write anything eschatological or vacuous. I would not write if I do not have something useful, beautiful or good to say.

We begin an interview with the words of a LIJ author about your work. More than one of the creators that I have contacted for these interviews talks about you as a reference and / or author that they admire. In addition to a test of your senescence, how does it feel to know that your work is appreciated by your colleagues? What would you say goodbye to them, to your reading public?

I don't think that five decades of life makes me too senescent. However, when a colleague or a reader thinks of me with beautiful words, I feel happiness, pride, satisfaction, and that gives me strength and desire to continue doing so. To the readers, always expect a new story, because the best, as in the tales of the sultana, is always the next.