Lydia Cabrera (1899-1991) was a Cuban ethnographer, literary activist, and author of numerous books on Afro-Cuban culture, including El Monte. Ivor L. Miller is senior lecturer in the Department of History and International Studies at the University of Calabar, Cross River State, Nigeria. He also holds a research fellowship from the African Studies Center at Boston University and is author of Voice of the Leopard: African Secret Societies and Cuba, published by University Press of Mississippi. P. González Gómes-Cásseres is senior lecturer emerita in the Spanish and Portuguese Department at Smith College. She is author of La sartén por el mango: Encuentro de escritoras latinoamericanas and Confluencias en México.