"Cuba is the only country on earth that US citizens can’t travel to freely."
The Venceremos Brigade Chapbook Series is a collection of essays written by members of the Venceremos Brigade (VB) about the multigenerational interplay of activists experiencing the politics and culture of Cuba. VB volunteers—aka, brigadistas—have led annual political education trips to the island since the civil rights era, and now The Head & The Hand (H&H) is proud to partner with the VB to bring this chronicle of solidarity to print.
By supporting the VB and H&H with a pre-order of one (or all 8!) chapbooks in the series, you help ensure these solidarity stories are printed and distributed as widely as possible. The chapbook series publication date is July 26, 2021, National Rebellion Day in Cuba, which marks the beginning of the armed struggle against the Batista dictatorship (on July 26, 1953) and the founding of the movement that would eventually triumph and establish the Cuban Revolution in 1959.
Meet The Brigadistas Behind the Chapbooks
Caitlin Gianniny, Cuba and Consent
A nonfiction essay, explores how the framing of the conflict between the United States and Cuba as being rooted in the Cold War ignores a much longer history of US colonialism. Gianniny draws the connection between current awareness around “consent” with imperialist policy—being at its core about acting without the consent of a people or nation—as a new frame for Americans to understand the current conflict.
Author Bio: Caitlin Gianniny is a writer, artist and co-founder of a majority women-owned worker cooperative, Samara Collective. Samara partners with values-based organizations to develop long-term creative pathways to progress using strategic communications and capacity building. She earned a B.F.A. from Cooper Union and a Ed.M. in Mind, Brain and Education from Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Rachael Ibrahim and Malcolm Sacks, Practice Space: Reflections on Ten Years Organizing with the Venceremos Brigade
A dialogue between longtime VB organizers about the values and experiences at the heart of their practice and contributions to the legacy of the brigade. In this wide-ranging conversation, Ibrahim and Sacks explore the many joys and challenges of Cuba solidarity work, touching on themes of identity, personal political development, shared leadership, and community accountability.
Author Bios: Rachael Ibrahim first traveled to Cuba with the 38th contingent of the Venceremos Brigade in 2007. She is a community organizer and Racial Equity & Liberation trainer. Malcolm Sacks first participated in the VB on the 40th contingent in 2009. He is a public high school teacher, popular education practitioner, and activist. For the last 10 years they have worked together as volunteer organizers to sustain the work of the VB in New York and across the US.
Elena Schwolsky, Venceremos! Excerpt from Waking in Havana: A Memoir of AIDS and Healing in Cuba,
This is the introductory chapter of Schwolsky’s memoir, published by She Writes Press in 2019. Since her introduction to Cuba through the Venceremos Brigade in 1973, she has returned many times over the past 30 years as part of an exchange with Cuba's AIDS program.
Author Bio: Elena Schwolsky, RN, MPH, is a nurse, community health educator, activist, and writer who spent a decade as a pediatric nurse at the height of the AIDS epidemic. She has trained AIDS educators in Cuba and Tanzania and currently teaches community health workers in diverse urban neighborhoods in New York City.
Diana Block, Arc of Solidarity—From the 10th to the 50th Brigades
A two-part exploration of one volunteer’s experience of the challenges and complications of solidarity politics and the continuity of commitment to the Cuban revolution in two distinct eras of brigade life.
Author Bio: Blockhas been a feminist anti-imperialist activist since the 1970s. In 1975 she was a founding member of the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee (PFOC), a revolutionary anti-imperialist organization. She participated in the 10th Venceremos Brigade as a representative of PFOC. She is the author of a memoir, Arm the Spirit: A Woman’s Journey Underground and Back (AK Press 2009) and a novel, Clandestine Occupations: An Imaginary History (PM Press, 2015).
Onyesonwu Chatoyer, African Solidarity with the Cuban Revolution
An unflinching essay that immediately raises the stakes for its readers with this statement: "Cuba has shown in word and deed for many years that they understand their freedom is ultimately inextricably connected to the freedom of all peoples and all life on Earth."
Author Bio: Chatoyer is an African woman marooned in the United States, organizing to defeat capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism. She is an organizer with the All-African People's Revolutionary Party and the All-African Women's Revolutionary Union.
Louis Segal, Cuba: Memories from My Life as a Venceremos Brigadista, 1969-1970
A memoir excerpt that illuminates Segal’s experiences of traveling on the inaugural VB trip to Cuba— from the profound to the profane— through a lens he aims on his activism a half-century later, a poignant compendium to celebrate 50 years of the VB."
Author Bio: Segal was an adjunct professor of Latin American history from 1993 to 2015. He taught at UCB, UCD, UCSC, CSUEB, SJS, Stanford, Naval Postgraduate School, SSU, and USF.
Stephanie Hedgecoke, Cuba and the 50th Venceremos Brigade: Medicine for Eco-Grief
An essay best encapsulated with this quote: “Working with the 50th Venceremos Brigade, I found medicine for my heart and spirit, and witnessed revolutionary Cuban work to address problems of environmental devastation. I went there depressed, but returned in good spirits with renewed energy to support Cuba, while continuing our work in this country fighting the ills of capitalist society.”
Author Bio: Hedgecoke became a Cuba supporter while at San Francisco State University, where she took her B.A. in history and Native studies and organized with the Peoples Anti-War Mobilization. She first traveled to Cuba in 1992 with the US-Cuba Labor Exchange during the Special Period. As a long-time Cuba supporter, Hedgecoke returned to Cuba on her first trip with the Venceremos Brigade in 2019. She has recently retired as a typesetter/proofreader and remains active in her CWA Local.
Dick Cluster, Lázara
An essay that takes as its namesake one of the most galvanizing, enigmatic women we’ve had the pleasure to encounter on the page. Cluster’s own story of an awakening to activism and Cuba’s political landscape, from the 1st Brigade onward, is woven into Lázara’s singular life story.
Author Bio: Cluster is a writer and Spanish-English translator, co-author with Rafael Hernández of The History of Havana. He translates fiction, poetry, and academic writing from Cuba and elsewhere, and interprets for Latin Americans seeking asylum in the US. Between 1992 and 1996 he worked on a collaborative project with Cuban professors of English, primarily in Havana.
About the Venceremos Brigade
The Venceremos (“We Shall Overcome”) Brigade (VB) is an anti-imperialist political education and voluntary labor project in solidarity with Cuba. We are an intergenerational, multi-racial, multi-cultural, gender-expansive/-inclusive collective of volunteers committed to changing US policy toward Cuba and strengthening the relationships between the Cuban Revolution and movements for justice in the US. The VB was formed in 1969 by a coalition of young people from US social movements, with the goal of expressing solidarity with the Cuban Revolution by working side by side with Cuban workers and directly challenging US policies towards Cuba, including the economic blockade and the US government’s ban on travel to the island.
Over the last 50 years, nearly 10,000 people from the US have traveled to Cuba with the VB, including elected officials, labor leaders, artists and entertainers, academics, activists, and social movement leaders, among them the late Yuri Kochiyama, who described the experience in 1989 as a “golden opportunity to work, study, and learn about global liberation struggles and socialism in Cuba.” While the project has evolved over time, the Venceremos Brigade has always kept its format of work, educational activities, and travel, and maintained its commitment to organizing the most diverse contingents possible, with Brigadistas of all ages, coming from regions across the US, representing many different racial, ethnic, religious, and class backgrounds, and identifying across the spectrums of gender, sexuality, and ability.
In 2019, the VB celebrated its 50th anniversary with a 155-member contingent to Cuba, the largest in recent history, affirming once again our beliefs: in the right of all people to travel and build connections across borders, in the right of Cuba and all colonized nations to self-determination, and in the need for internationalist solidarity in the long fight for liberation.
About The Head & The Hand
The Head & The Hand is a nonprofit, independent craft publishing company and writers' workshop based in Philadelphia. We call it “craft” because we consider writers to be artisans, much like a carpenter or a farmer. And just as a farmer is connected to the crop from the seed to the harvest, we think that a writer should be connected to the process of crafting a book, from manuscript submission to the shelf.
With business practices influenced by the work ethic of artisans, we strive to work with authors, both aspiring and established, whose work is not confined to a specific style or mindset. Our main goal is to produce writing that shows a connection from the head to the hand by publishing stories that have the power to spark change and entertain. H&H also operates a community-focused bookstore that provides curated fiction, local lit, and children’s/middle grade books to the Kensington neighborhood and beyond.