Times Change Press (cover designer: Su Negrin, illustrator: Nuez, editor and translator: Anita Whitney), "Somos/We Are: Five Contemporary Cuban Poets," 1970. Offset print, book.

Su Negrin's cover design for "Somos/We Are" creates an evocative visual synthesis of Cuban revolutionary identity through spare, expressive line work. Against a warm burnt orange background, the composition features a stylized palm tree reaching skyward, a radiating sun, and a revolutionary figure holding a rifle alongside what appears to be a traditional drum or conga. The hand-drawn illustration by Cuban artist Nuez captures the fusion of cultural heritage and revolutionary commitment. The bilingual title—"Somos/we are"—rendered in contrasting cream script and bold black serif type, immediately establishes the book's mission of cross-cultural communication. The informal, sketchy quality of the illustration suggests both urgency and authenticity, while the warm earth tones evoke the Cuban landscape and revolutionary fervor.

Published by Times Change Press in 1970 as issue number 49 in their "Ko/Revolution" series and priced at one dollar, this anthology made contemporary Cuban revolutionary poetry accessible to American readers during the height of the U.S. blockade. The press—founded in the late 1960s to challenge American capitalism and imperialism—explicitly positioned itself against establishment publishing, stating that "material is copyrighted to prevent reprinting by establishment publishers for their profit" while freely granting permission for use aligned with their revolutionary purposes. They particularly sought material from women, the third world, youth, working and poor people to correct existing discrimination in communications.

Editor Anita Whitney, born in 1936, lived and worked in Cuba from 1960 to 1968, where she sculpted, wrote, and translated. She compiled this collection featuring five of Cuba's most celebrated poets: Nicolás Guillén, Belkis Cuza Malé, Guillermo Rodríguez, Nancy Morejón, and Victor Casáus. In her introduction "With Our Fists and Our Flaws," Whitney argues that political poetry exalting soldiers and regimes may seem distasteful to American revolutionaries precisely because "America as a nation is not poetic, at this stage of the game." She insists that authentic poetry and world poeticity can only survive through destruction of the American empire, and that revolutionary Cuban poetry—emerging from the oppressed—challenges the untenables of capitalist society. Most translations were completed by members of the American community in Cuba, with Whitney taking editorial liberty to refine them. This bilingual edition, illustrated throughout by Nuez, offered American audiences a glimpse into the emotional reality of life in revolutionary Cuba.