Chávez-Rivera, Armando. “Rupturas y continuidades entre Poems by a Slave in the Island of Cuba y el portafolio antiesclavista de Domingo del Monte.” Polymath 4.4 (2014): 61-71.

In 1840, British diplomat Richard Robert Madden published Poems by a Slave in the Island of Cuba, which includes the autobiography and several poems of Cuban Juan Francisco Manzano (1797-1853). The criticism usually refers to the value of the volume because of the inclusion of the autobiography. However, the associations between those pages and the seven poems are typically overlooked, as well as the whole of the works that were originally part of the collection gathered together by the critic Domingo del Monte. This article explores the ideological similarities between Manzano's poems and other texts in this collection of antislavery writings, emphasizing the points of contact between Madden's political project and the interests of the criollos. The testimonial zeal, religious and moral denunciation, and the claims of its suitability to represent the Cuban colonial reality are consistent in Poems by a Slave in the Island of Cuba and in the del Monte's collection.