ABOUT LYDIA CABRERA
Cuban author, poet, Afro-Cuban anthropologist and activist who wrote the 1954 work El Monte.
She moved to Paris in 1927 and lived there for eleven years while studying art.
She wrote several works on the secretive Abakua sect, an Afro-Cuban religious group.
She was one of eight children born to a wealthy, socially prominent Havana family.
She left her native country following Fidel Castro 's Cuban revolution and lived in Spain and Florida.