Words from Cuban Spanish ( cubano or cubaño) are sprinkled throughout the text, most often because there is no exact English equivalent to use instead. This reader also had trouble remembering which character was which.Īnd the language is a challenge. The telling of the story in fragments from multiple, occasionally contradictory viewpoints requires the reader to reconstruct the tale from incomplete, conflicting details. The Black Cathedral is not easy to understand. No narratives come from the principal characters, the Stuarts, with one exception: At the very end of the book, we hear from Samuel Prince, but his narrative is almost entirely a quote from what he imagines others will say to him. They end up in the U.S., Spain, and Italy. Because of the poverty and ugliness, as many as can leave Cuba for other countries. Some characters continue to speak after death. Among the most prominent are Yohandris Carlos Fernández Ramírez, known as Guts, who eventually escapes to Spain Ricardo Mora Gutiérrez, called Gringo, a murderer who ends up on death row and Berta, a local woman who witnesses the entire story. We hear from 24 characters who talk about the Stuarts and each other. They are not chronological we are fed the story in bits and pieces. The statements run from a single paragraph to several pages. The reader learns the story of Punta Gotica from spoken narratives. Women with a light complexion are valued over those who are dark. They distinguish themselves by how black they are. It gradually falls into ruin and turns black, becoming a symbol of the degradation of the black community that built it.Īlmost all the inhabitants of Punta Gotica, including the Stuarts, are black.
Only at the conclusion of the story does it become clear that the church will never be finished. The building of the cathedral progresses throughout the roughly eight years covered by the book. By the end, all but Johannes, and perhaps Carmen (one character says she was killed by her sons another says she survived), are dead. The family consists of five members: Arturo Carmen, the mother David King, the elder son (known as Cricket), who, as a child, is beaten by his father, but as an adult, grows to six feet, five inches and is endowed with a phenomenal sexual appendage the younger son, Samuel Prince (known as Jelly) and the daughter, Johannes. They are erratically religious, starting each conversation with “Blessings.”
Nor does the reader learn why the family, obviously better off financially than the other inhabitants of Punta Gotica, has moved to Cienfuegos from Camagüey in the central part of the island. Why the Stuarts have an Anglo-Saxon name is never explained. The story, set in the first decade of the 21st century, centers on the Stuart family and the church, referred to as “the cathedral,” that Arturo Stuart, the father, begins building with the cooperation of the people who live in the Punta Gotica quarter of Cienfuegos.
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