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Exhibition Collecting Memories: Treasures from the Library of Congress

Collecting Memories: Treasures from the Library of Congress

<span lang="es">Las calles rotas de mi ciudad</span> / The Broken Streets of My City

Handmade book lies at angle. Three tan Kraft paper inserts sit nearby. Two contain Estévez’s handprints and postage stamp-like images of woman with “My City” or “Mi Ciudad” written across face. Third piece of Kraft paper contains handwritten poem and drawings in black pen.
Ruth Behar and Rolando Estévez Jordán. Las calles rotas de mi ciudad / The Broken Streets of My City. Matanzas, Cuba, 2013. Photograph by Gavin Ashworth. Rare Book & Special Collections Division (026.00.00)
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Book is open to inside cover and first page. In book cover, collaged elements feature “Made in Cuba” and author’s initials. First Kraft paper page has blue, grey, white, and yellow collage with women’s faces, papers, and map of Cuba. Kraft paper page with black handprint and two postage stamp-style images of women are displayed on right of book.
Ruth Behar and Rolando Estévez Jordán. Las calles rotas de mi ciudad / The Broken Streets of My City. Matanzas, Cuba, 2013. Photograph by Shawn Miller. Rare Book & Special Collections Division (026.00.00)
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Las calles rotas de mi ciudad / The Broken Streets of My City

The cover of this unique artist book is fashioned from tar shingles used as roofing material in Havana. The cover represents both the asphalt streets and the houses that line it, to which artist Rolando Estévez Jordán has glued pebbles, sand, and seashells, to evoke the city’s crumbling infrastructure and the ever-present sea. Estévez hand-lettered Ruth Behar’s poems on long strips of paper. As Behar describes: “Referencing lines and symbols in my poem, Estévez incorporates imprints of his hands; images of the Virgin of Regla (also known as Yemayá), patron of the sea; and an image of myself as a child with my parents. The brown Kraft paper used throughout this book harkens back to butcher’s wrapping paper, which was the only paper available in Matanzas when Estévez began making books in the 1980s.”