Nicolas Guillen, an Afro-Cuban born in 1902, became known as Cuba's national poet.
Of African and Spanish descent, Guillen studied law in Havana but abandoned a legal career to pursue journalism.
Guillen founded a literary magazine with his brother and wrote for several Cuban newspapers and magazines. In 1930, he published his ground-breaking collection of poetry, Motivos de Son. Guillen's poems were informed by his multicultural background. In Songoro Cosongo, published in 1931, he emphasized the importance of mulatto culture in Cuban history. Langston Hughes translated Guillen's poetry in a collection called Cuba Libre. Guillen's writing became increasingly political; and in 1937, he joined the Communist party.
Guillen spent much of the 1940s and 1950s in exile but was welcomed back to Cuba by Fidel Castro. Guillen published more than a dozen books in his lifetime. He died in 1989 after a long illness.
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