Anna in the Tropics

Introduction

Anna in the Tropics portrays the inhabits of cigar factory employees in Ybor City, Tampa, Florida, when a new lector, possibly the last to practise his trade, is hired. The men and women stay split up in their loyalties as financial hardship and the force to leave old traditions force the proprietors of the cigar factory to take up new, progressive constructing methods if they desire to stay in business. As the lector reads from Anna Karenina, a innovative of adultery set in nineteenth-century Russia, he casts a spell over the employees, transforming their passions and yearns through the affirming power of art. That the love they search may outcome in a tragic end is ordained as much by the story of the Russian noblewoman as it is by the activities of the employees themselves.

Initially, Nilo Cruz was going to write the play so that it took place in the 1800's since, at that time, lectors were very instrumental in the cigar factories. So instrumental, in fact, that Cuba's leader, Jose Marti, traveled to Florida to read to the workers. This was so influential that many of the workers formed a brigade and went to Cuba to fight for its independence against Spain. However, after fully researching this history, Cruz felt as though the historical account would complicate the story too much. He liked the major aim to be on el lectors. Therefore, he chose to have the play set in 1929 because at this time many lectors were being laid off due to the beginning of the depression.

Cruz sensed that it was important to article the presence of these early Cuban-Americans. This is because most stories neglect this time period and focus only after 1959, when there was an influx of Cubans in America due to ...