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I Embrace You With All My Revolutionary Fervor

Letters 1947-1967

Part of The Che Guevara Library

Author Ernesto Che Guevara
Foreword by Aleida Guevara
Edited by Maria del Carmen Ariet Garcia, Disamis Arcia Munoz
Paperback
$18.95 US
Seven Stories Press
5.51"W x 8.5"H x 1.05"D   | 15 oz | 28 per carton
On sale Aug 01, 2023 | 384 Pages | 9781644212448
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Collected for the first time, here are Guevara's letters, the vast majority never-before published in English.

"The powerful of the earth should take heed: deep inside that T-shirt where we have tried to trap him, the eyes of Che Guevara are still burning with impatience." —Ariel Dorfman

Ernesto Che Guevara was a voyager—and thus a letter writer—for his entire adult life. The letters collected here range from letters home during his Motorcycle Diaries trip, to the long letter to Fidel after the success of the Cuban revolution in early 1959, from the most personal to the intensely political, revealing someone who not only thought deeply about everything he encountered, but for whom the process of social transformation was a constant companion from his youth until shortly before his death. His letters give us Che the son, the friend, the lover, the guerilla fighter, the political leader, the philosopher, the poet. Che in these letters is often playful, funny, sometimes sarcastic, and deeply affectionate. His life was short, and these twenty years, from when he was 19 until days before his death, show it was also incredibly rich and full.
 
As his daughter Aleida Guevara, also a doctor like her father, writes, "When you write a speech, you pay attention to the language, the punctuation and so on. But in a letter to a friend or a member of your family, you don't worry about those things. It is you speaking, in your authentic voice. That's what I like about these letters; they show who Che really was and how he thought. This is the true political testimony of my father."
 
This book is available in a Spanish language edition, Te abraza con todo fervor revolucionario.

"Che is not only an intellectual, he was the most complete human being of our age." —Jean Paul Sartre

"In these present times, when for many ethics and other profound moral values are seen to be so easily bought and sold, the example of Che Guevara takes on an even greater dimension." —Rigoberta Menchu
“Of its contents, 80 percent has never beenavailable before. Deftly edited by Havana scholars María del Carmen Ariet García and Disamis Arcia Muñoz, the letters in I Embrace You are a newly available revelation. To read them is to discover his humor, his courage, his frankness, his odd blend of arrogance and generosity, his wanderlust and his idealism, his willingness to subsume himself in the cause of freedom for the poor in Cuba, in Congo, and in Bolivia. . . . In his sharp, clear, witty prose, you discover his irony, his love of poetry, his smooth shifts among registers— a writerly ease stemming from years ofreading world literature.”
— Joy Castro in the Los Angeles Review of Books
Born in Rosario, Argentina, on June 14, 1928, and killed on October 9, 1967, the short life of Ernesto Guevara de la Serna is that of one of the greatest and most enduring revolutionary figures of all time, named one of Time magazine's "icons of the 20th century." He was politicized first-hand during his travels as a young man around Latin America, and especially by witnessing the CIA-backed overthrow of the elected government of Jacobo Árbenz in 1954 in Guatemala. He sought out a group of Cuban revolutionaries exiled in Mexico City. And, in July 1955, immediately after meeting their leader Fidel Castro, enlisted in their expedition to overthrow Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. The Cubans nicknamed him "Che," a popular form of address in Argentina.

Four years later, after a fierce revolutionary struggle, General Batista fled on January 1, 1959, and Che became a key leader in the new revolutionary government. Che was also the main representative of the Cuban revolutionary government around the world, heading numerous delegations to Asia, Africa, Latin America and the United States. Beginning in 1965, Che lead two Cuban missions to support revolutionary struggles elsewhere in the world, first in Congo and then in Bolivia. Both of these interventions failed, and Che's accounts of these struggles in Congo Diary and The Bolivian Diary show the lessons learned and the humility and fierce intelligence with which Che approached every revolutionary struggle.
Ernesto Che Guevara View titles by Ernesto Che Guevara

Educator Guide for I Embrace You With All My Revolutionary Fervor

Classroom-based guides appropriate for schools and colleges provide pre-reading and classroom activities, discussion questions connected to the curriculum, further reading, and resources.

(Please note: the guide displayed here is the most recently uploaded version; while unlikely, any page citation discrepancies between the guide and book is likely due to pagination differences between a book’s different formats.)

Read More

About

Collected for the first time, here are Guevara's letters, the vast majority never-before published in English.

"The powerful of the earth should take heed: deep inside that T-shirt where we have tried to trap him, the eyes of Che Guevara are still burning with impatience." —Ariel Dorfman

Ernesto Che Guevara was a voyager—and thus a letter writer—for his entire adult life. The letters collected here range from letters home during his Motorcycle Diaries trip, to the long letter to Fidel after the success of the Cuban revolution in early 1959, from the most personal to the intensely political, revealing someone who not only thought deeply about everything he encountered, but for whom the process of social transformation was a constant companion from his youth until shortly before his death. His letters give us Che the son, the friend, the lover, the guerilla fighter, the political leader, the philosopher, the poet. Che in these letters is often playful, funny, sometimes sarcastic, and deeply affectionate. His life was short, and these twenty years, from when he was 19 until days before his death, show it was also incredibly rich and full.
 
As his daughter Aleida Guevara, also a doctor like her father, writes, "When you write a speech, you pay attention to the language, the punctuation and so on. But in a letter to a friend or a member of your family, you don't worry about those things. It is you speaking, in your authentic voice. That's what I like about these letters; they show who Che really was and how he thought. This is the true political testimony of my father."
 
This book is available in a Spanish language edition, Te abraza con todo fervor revolucionario.

"Che is not only an intellectual, he was the most complete human being of our age." —Jean Paul Sartre

"In these present times, when for many ethics and other profound moral values are seen to be so easily bought and sold, the example of Che Guevara takes on an even greater dimension." —Rigoberta Menchu

Praise

“Of its contents, 80 percent has never beenavailable before. Deftly edited by Havana scholars María del Carmen Ariet García and Disamis Arcia Muñoz, the letters in I Embrace You are a newly available revelation. To read them is to discover his humor, his courage, his frankness, his odd blend of arrogance and generosity, his wanderlust and his idealism, his willingness to subsume himself in the cause of freedom for the poor in Cuba, in Congo, and in Bolivia. . . . In his sharp, clear, witty prose, you discover his irony, his love of poetry, his smooth shifts among registers— a writerly ease stemming from years ofreading world literature.”
— Joy Castro in the Los Angeles Review of Books

Author

Born in Rosario, Argentina, on June 14, 1928, and killed on October 9, 1967, the short life of Ernesto Guevara de la Serna is that of one of the greatest and most enduring revolutionary figures of all time, named one of Time magazine's "icons of the 20th century." He was politicized first-hand during his travels as a young man around Latin America, and especially by witnessing the CIA-backed overthrow of the elected government of Jacobo Árbenz in 1954 in Guatemala. He sought out a group of Cuban revolutionaries exiled in Mexico City. And, in July 1955, immediately after meeting their leader Fidel Castro, enlisted in their expedition to overthrow Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. The Cubans nicknamed him "Che," a popular form of address in Argentina.

Four years later, after a fierce revolutionary struggle, General Batista fled on January 1, 1959, and Che became a key leader in the new revolutionary government. Che was also the main representative of the Cuban revolutionary government around the world, heading numerous delegations to Asia, Africa, Latin America and the United States. Beginning in 1965, Che lead two Cuban missions to support revolutionary struggles elsewhere in the world, first in Congo and then in Bolivia. Both of these interventions failed, and Che's accounts of these struggles in Congo Diary and The Bolivian Diary show the lessons learned and the humility and fierce intelligence with which Che approached every revolutionary struggle.
Ernesto Che Guevara View titles by Ernesto Che Guevara

Additional Materials

Educator Guide for I Embrace You With All My Revolutionary Fervor

Classroom-based guides appropriate for schools and colleges provide pre-reading and classroom activities, discussion questions connected to the curriculum, further reading, and resources.

(Please note: the guide displayed here is the most recently uploaded version; while unlikely, any page citation discrepancies between the guide and book is likely due to pagination differences between a book’s different formats.)

Read More

Additional formats

Other books in this series

Other Books by this Author

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