Andrea Herrera presenting two talks on Cuban diasporic art and literature this Thursday and Friday

Andrea O'Reilly Herrera

Two presentations that celebrate Cuban diasporic art and literature will be delivered in early October at SUNY Fredonia by Dr. Andrea O’Reilly Herrera, professor of Women’s and Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs and a former SUNY Fredonia English professor, to commemorate Hispanic Heritage Month.

Multi-ethnic identity, writing and art will be the focus of Herrera’s first talk, “Three Women Reside Within Me,” which serves as a meditation on bridging the personal and the professional, on Thursday, Oct. 4, 3:30, at the 204 Williams Center.

The major presentation, which explores Herrera’s monograph, “Cuban Artists Across the Diaspora: Setting the Tent Against the House,” her most recent scholarly work, will be delivered Friday, Oct. 5, at 3 p.m., in the Japanese Garden area of Reed Library. Raul Villarreal, a New Jersey-based artist who is among artists featured in Herrera’s work, will join Herrera at the slide/lecture program, which formally launches the Department of English’s Mary Louise White Memorial Lecture series. A reception at 4:30 p.m. will follow their talk.

A series of paintings by Villarreal, “Otros Cielos/Other Skies: Art in the Diaspora,” has been hung in Reed Library. A separate case celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month, which runs Sept. 15 through Oct. 15, previews the event. A display of Herrera’s books, including her novel “Pearl of the Antilles,” and Villarreal’s memoir of his father, who was a confidante of Ernest Hemingway, “Hemingway’s Cuban Son,” can be found in the university bookstore.

Sponsors of the two-day event include the Department of English, Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, Latinos Unidos, Latino Studies-Interdisciplinary Programs, Faculty-Student Association and the Mary Louise White Fund, through the Fredonia College Foundation. Both talks are free and open to the public.