Oscar Hijuelos (1951-2013)

The Americas Society mourns the passing of Cuban-American novelist Oscar Hijuelos, who died unexpectedly on October 12 at the age of 62. A shining light among Latin American and Latino writers, as well as within the international literary community, Oscar produced a solid body of work including novels that explore identity as well as the immigrant experience such as Our House in the Last World (1983) and The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (1989); and, most recently, a memoir, Thoughts Without Cigarettes (2011). The last book charts his family’s arrival in the United States from Cuba, his childhood and adolescence spent largely in New York, and his development as a writer, culminating in his receipt of the Pulitzer Prize in 1990 for The Mambo Kings, making him the first Latino writer to be awarded that distinction.

A memorial service for Oscar Hijuelos will be held at the Riverside Church on 120th and Riverside Drive in New York on Monday, December 2, 2013 at 7:00 p.m.

As he details in his memoir, Oscar first became acquainted with the Americas Society—formerly known as the Center for Inter-American Relations—in the early 1980s, when he met then-Director of Literature Lori Carlson, who introduced him to the department’s programming and other activities. As he recounts, both Lori and the Center left a deep impression on him, giving him exposure to a wealth of renowned Latin American writers—including Jorge Luis Borges, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Octavio Paz, Luisa Valenzuela, and Mario Vargas Llosa—as well as the chance to meet other young writers, many of whom became his friends, such as Julio Marzán and Ed Vega. Oscar went on, of course, to become an acclaimed author himself, and some years later, he and Lori would marry.

It has been my privilege not only to have read Oscar’s work over the years, but, through my association with Lori, to have had the opportunity to get to know him a bit—enough to recognize his outstanding personal qualities, among them modesty and affability, all the more admirable given his enormous fame—and to present him in Literature programming at the Society. During my tenure to date, Oscar has been featured on three occasions—in an event celebrating the republication of Our House in the Last World, in 2003; with Lori in a reading from their co-edited poetry anthology, Burnt Sugar, in 2006; and for the launch of his memoir Thoughts without Cigarettes two-and-a-half years ago. That event was followed by an interview with the author at the Society that later aired on WNET’s Sunday Arts. It has been an additional privilege, for both the department and the organization as a whole, to publish original work by Oscar and reviews of his books in Review magazine through the years. It was my intention to invite him to present a lecture for a forthcoming season on “The Americas in New York” next fall.

It saddens me that this and other possibilities, the chance to glean from his presence and ideas, will now not materialize and will only be “what ifs” in the long wash of time. But, like many others among Oscar’s loyal readers, I’m grateful for the many novels and other works of literature that he leaves as his legacy. While he will no longer be with us in the flesh, his words, stories, characters, and the adventures they undertake in his books, will continue to resonate and be savored over time.

Daniel Shapiro
Director of Literature, Americas Society
Editor, Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas