Roberto G. Fernández

Roberto G. Fernández (born 24 September 1951) is a Cuban American novelist and short story writer. He is noted for his grotesque satires of the Cuban American community, especially in his English-language novels, Raining Backwards and Holy Radishes! In 2001, he was named the Dorothy Lois Breen Hoffman Professor of Modern Languages and Linguistics at Florida State University.

Biography

Early life Fernández's family immigrated to the States in 1961, when Fernández was 10. He grew up in Miami, which he now considers his home, although he lives and teaches in Tallahassee, Florida.

Literary work Fernández has been said to be part of the Cuban American avant-garde. His writing is said to engage the links among history, exile, personal, and collective identity, and simultaneously defamiliarize them through parody and pastiche, counteracting in such a move the underlying poignancy of the diasporic experience.

Fernández is known for the way he satirizes the Cuban community in Miami. One critic says that he "has mastered like no other the carnivalesque art of portraying grotesquely a community in a perpetual state of crisis". For instance, Raining Backwards depicts a generation "caught between two cultural worlds that they do not fully understand and to which they do not fully belong".

Although Fernández's first two books, written in Spanish, were "well received within the Cuban exile literary community", he did not gain wide critical attention until he published in English.

Published works Cuentos sin rumbo [Aimless Tales] (story collection; 1975) La vida es un special [Life is a Bargain] (1982) La montaña rusa [The Roller Coaster] (story cycle; 1985) Raining Backwards (1988) Holy Radishes! (1995) En la ocho y la doce [The Corner of Eighth and Twelfth] (2001) Entre dos aguas (2007) El Príncipe y la Bella Cubano (2015) Short stories include "Wrong Channel", "The Brewery", "Is in the Stars" and "It’s not Easy"

Awards Cintas Foundation Fellowship (1986–87) Florida Arts Council Fellowship (1993)