Marisabidillas – A Reading Club to Combat Cuba’s Chaos

By Ella Fernandez (El Toque)

HAVANA TIMES – The year 1883 brought a transcendental change to Cuba: for the first time, a woman was allowed to enroll in what was then the Royal and Literary University of Havana. Years later, others would follow – all white women from the upper and middle classes. Not the impoverished ethnic groups, sunk beneath the weight of colonization. Nonetheless, the initial event unleashed bitter criticism from the most conservative sectors, who feared that the excessive intellectual work would transform these women into “female spectacles,” “masculine women,” or “know-it-all’s”.

Paris, 1871. At the other end of the world, following the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian war and the later abdication of Napoleon III, 10,000 women participated actively in the Paris Commune. Their radical demands for reform included, among other things, the right to be taught through a lay and rational curriculum. The bourgeois press of the era smeared them as ugly Marisabidilla’s, for the simple fact of knowing how to read.

Marisabidilla is a word that Elizabeth (Lisa) Quintana Lezcano used to hear at home in El Cerro, Havana – A synonym for “smart aleck,” or “know-it-all.” It was used for a woman who held her own opinions. Opinions that were not always welcome. Opinions that no one asked for, but that she knew how to offer.

In June 2024, Elizabeth, now a twenty-first century marisabidilla herself, with a diploma in Literature from the University of Havana, decided to give new meaning to the term. She used it to name her free book club in Havana. A club that brings together some thirty people a month to read a brief modern book, written by a woman from another country. The club’s whimsical aesthetic has taken the social networks by storm.

“The marisabidilla is now giving her views on everything. And you might as well get used to it,” Elizabeth asserts.

The Covid-19 lockdown marked a parting of the waters for Elizabeth. In 2020, while the pandemic was raging, she began to get more interested in the contents posted on social media, especially those having to do with books. On YouTube, she discovered Alejandra Arevalo, alias “Soy Sputnik,” a Mexican literary mediator and the creator of “Libros before Tipos,” an online project that brings women together around books by contemporary female authors.

Thanks to this space, Elizabeth was introduced to writers such as Mariana Enriquez, Monica Ojeda, Fernanda Melchor and Samanta Schweblin. A new universe unfolded before her.

Up until then, the University of Havana’s Department of Arts and Letters predominantly emphasized male authors. This practice, added to the conviction that the time for reading is finite and should best be used to read critically acclaimed works, had led her to focus almost exclusively on “classic” or “canonical” writing, to the detriment of contemporary authors who weren’t always legitimized by the critics. The yer 2020 marked a change in that focus.

“Why should I deprive myself of reading these women I identify so closely with? Women close to me in time, who share the realities of this continent, who write viscerally, in a way that’s out of this world?” she wondered.

Thanks to Alejandra Arevalo, Elizabeth also heard the term “reading mediator,” someone who facilitates the encounter between books and readers, a bridge between literary works and the public. During her university career, the outside work focused on teaching, criticism, academia, and even radio and television, but never contemplated a more community-focused work. They never envisioned working with people who weren’t specialized in literature, or who weren’t from the academic world.

It seemed to me a more authentic path, for the person I was becoming,” Elizabeth explains in her conversation with El Toque.

Elizabeth did her social service at the Casa de las Americas. For three years, she worked in the Women’s Studies Program, where she discovered a new custom that had been born during the 1990s, thanks to several Mexican academics who visited Havana. It consisted of scheduled debates among a group of Cuban professors – of sociology, history, psychology among others – who would choose an essay in the field of gender studies and meet later at the Casa de las Americas to discuss it.

“I thought: ‘How lovely it would be not to depend on programs or syllabuses, but to simply choose a text, then meet somewhere and talk about it.’ It seemed to me like something so easy to obtain, with few resources. It was all about creating interest and building community,” Elizabeth comments.

“Truthfully, I wanted a project that would be more my own. That I didn’t have to consult and then take to three different levels for approval. A project with my voice.

That desire came to fruition in March 2024, when Elizabeth left Casa de las Americas for what she describes as a leap of faith. One afternoon, while she was walking around Old Havana with a friend, they went and sat down at the House of Poetry. Elizabeth looked around the place and thought: “What a pretty site! How great it would be to meet with a group here and talk about books.”

It was an unexpected thought, impulsive, but she acted on it. She got up and spoke with the director in charge of the space and voiced the idea she’d been harboring for four years. He asked her to send her proposal in pdf format, and she complied. He never responded.

“Sometimes we don’t tell about the false beginnings, because we tend to idealize everything and forget those first stumbles. In the end, the first encounter wasn’t held in the House of Poetry. But that’s not important. It was special, and it’s still one of my favorite meetings,” she says.

The first gathering of the club took place in June at Balcon Cero [“Balcony Zero”], after reading French writer Annie Emaux’ autobiographical novel. Published in 2000, the book tells of her experience with a clandestine abortion in France in 1963, when interrupting a pregnancy was illegal and socially taboo.

Fifteen people came that day, despite the bad weather, not only to talk about the book but also to vent. Before the discussion, Elizabeth brought in a bowl of water and a medical tube painted red. Every participant wrote down on a piece of paper a moment of their lives when they felt violated. The papers were then dissolved in water, leaving them completely anonymous.

The methodology hasn’t changed much since then. The books chosen are short, intense, written by contemporary women authors, and focused on the feminine experience. Elizabeth understands that time for reading is ever more limited and places her bets on works that generate a lot of conversation in few pages. Books that leave “a thorn embedded.”

Before every meeting, the mediator prepares questions and possible topics for discussion and also leaves space for the unexpected. Doubts about the author’s chosen style or the evolution of the characters are interspersed with personal anecdotes, because everyone interprets what they read based on their experience. That’s also part of the concept behind “Marisabidillas” – to serve as a “third space.”

Elizabeth sees the club as a space for knowledge and fulfillment where diverse people meet to share a common interest. A place that’s not home, nor work, nor school, but more like the theater classes or sports many people attend as children, but that are difficult to find for adults. Elizabeth always knew that the club should bring back that sense of belonging. It’s especially needed in the Cuba of today, marked by constant emigrations – and farewells to friends – plus the scarcity of resources and basic services like electricity, which impacts physical and mental health.

This is Elizabeth’s creed: reading as a way of (re)connecting. Reading to heal, to develop empathy. Reading to reflect, reading to confront the blackouts.

“For many of the club members, reading has been a strategy for surviving the whirlwind. Even though we know that we don’t all have the calm or the energy to read, it’s been a needed refuge for some, a refuge that’s kept them afloat in the dark,” Elizabeth wrote on Instagram in October 2024.

In order to function, the books the club reads are downloaded from pirate sites and shared via WhatsApp or Telegram.

“I know that’s a controversial topic,” Elizabeth admits to El Toque. “I’m aware of the ethical implications of illegally downloading books. But in Cuba we don’t have access to the international publishing market. We can only buy books from Cuban publishing houses or from second-hand bookstores, where you rarely find recent titles. It’s even harder to find books written by women. To a certain extent, our context forces us to turn to those platforms.”

“Marisabidillas” marked its first anniversary in March 2025. During the time that the project has lasted, Elizabeth – with a diploma in Literature – has become not only community manager, which she had experience with before, but also graphic designer, scriptwriter, cultural promoter, producer, audiovisual effects specialist, editor, and even a bit of an actress, all to maintain the Club’s Instagram account and build the community. Lisa, the ten-year-old who took theater classes, had to overcome the adult Lisa, with her introvert tendencies.

Still, she’s ever thankful to the support received from many, many people along the road. “Friendly hands.”

“Sometimes it feels bad to say it’s my project alone, because my mother is really my right hand,” she explains. “My mother exerts a lot of influence over my decisions, from the Instagram captions to the choice of places to meet. She’s accompanied me to speak with directors or owners of different spaces. The project would be very different without her. I like to imagine us as a team of two.”

Even though the group doesn’t require a lot of resources, like all cultural projects in adverse times, keeping it going takes effort, conviction, and a lot of dedication. Elizabeth affirms this without hesitation. “Marisabidillas” isn’t her only job, it doesn’t bring in any money, and everything about it is free. As she defines it, it’s a “passion project.”

Nonetheless, in a Cuba that so often seems sterile, opening spaces like this book club, where its mediator seeks to spread love for books, not as a duty, but as a desire, is an important gesture. To clear reading of the weight of viewing it as a titanic task. To sit down, even for fifteen minutes, and allow yourself to be swept along by a story: to laugh or cry intensely, enter into a kind of mental trance in which, for a while we can escape from ourselves. “For me, reading is getting out of myself. Losing control, letting myself be taken away,” Elizabeth says.

That’s her desire and also her legacy – to help other people make reading into a reencounter with themselves, even amid the chaos. Her advice is simple but certain: to begin or reassume the habit of reading and get over the mental block, choose a book that’s brief and powerful, written by contemporary women from other parts of the world.

First published in Spanish by El Toque and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.

Read more from Cuba here on Havana Times.