Since the mid nineteenth century Cuban nationals have been exiled in the United States and created a body of literature alerting the reader to the specifically transnational nature of Cuban identity. Since the Cuban Revolution of 1959 and the concomitant political, economic and cultural isolation of the island, the case of Cuba and Cuban exiles in the USA has been seen to be an exceptional and singular phenomenon with few commonalities with other ethnic groups in the United States. Moving beyond a nation-based model and utilising a transnational theoretical framework this course looks at contemporary Cuban and Cuban-American literature and film from both on and off the island in order to reconceptualise the relationship between the island and its exiles, analysing the evolution of the Cuban exile life and the ways in which questions of exile, return, family, belonging, identity, language and memory are explored and how they differ from previous generations for a variety of political, historical, sociological and ideological reasons (to be explored).