The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #146642   Message #3395730
Posted By: MorwenEdhelwen1
27-Aug-12 - 01:21 AM
Thread Name: Folklore: Cultural input for story?
Subject: Folklore: Cultural input for story?
This question is a little weird, but I feel like I know the posters here well enough to ask it.

Right now I'm writing a novel. The story so far is seventeen pages long and is a young adult alternate history set in Cuba, where Batista stayed as president because Operation Verano succeeded. The protagonist is a fourteen-year-old clone of Che Guevara, at a time in the future where clones are used as slaves. He looks like a mulatto Cuban.

His foster parents are Afro-Cuban/ and Cuban "mulatta" (mixed-race) and both are Santeros. The songs of Lord Invader, Lord Kitchener (Kitch) and Lord Melody, as well as "Guantanamera," "Babalu", and various Jamaican and Haitian folk songs, are referred to several times. I know enough about pre-revolutionary Cuba to get the general cultural details right, but I want to be sure that my portrayal of Afro-Cuban culture, especially Santeria, and the folklore associated with it, is accurate.

Since I know that some of you have Afro-Cuban friends and knowledge of Afro-Cuban culture, would it be alright if I asked for cultural input?