José Juan Arrom

Arrom was born in Holguín, Cuba in 1910 to a Cuban mother and Mayorquín father. He grew up in the small town of Mayarí, where his father had a dry goods store. After emigrating to the United States in 1932, he attended the Mount Herman School in Northfield, Massachusetts. In 1934 he entered Yale University and earned three degrees: a B.A. (1937), M.A. (1940), and Ph.D. (1941). He was one of the first Latin American scholars to obtain a doctorate from a North American university. In 1947, he married Silvia Ravelo from Santiago de Cuba. The couple lived in New Haven, Connecticut and had two children, José Orlando Arrom and Silvia Marina Arrom.[3]

Arrom spent his entire career teaching at Yale University. In addition to offering courses on Latin American literature, he served as director of graduate studies in Spanish from 1952 to 1968. He also helped build the Latin American Collection of the Yale University Library, where he served as curator from 1942 to 1962. He retired as Professor Emeritus in 1976. Rolena Adorno praised him as "one of the true founders" of Yale's Department of Spanish and Portuguese and explained that "his contributions to the history of Latin American literature form part of the permanent record of the development of our discipline."[4]

Arrom has written more than a dozen books and numerous scholarly articles exploring a wide range of subjects and time periods. His survey of nearly five hundred years of Latin American literature, the Esquema generacional de las letras hispanoamericanas (1963) and Hispanoamérica: panorama contemporáneo de su cultura (1969) have been his most famous works. He discovered and edited two texts related to the Spanish conquest of the Americas: Fernan Perez de Oliva's Historia de la invención de las Indias (1965), and Ramón Pané’s Account of the Antiquities of the Indians – the only one of his books to be translated into English (1999). His studies of the Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre (Our Lady of Charity) and of the origin and meaning of the term criollo are now classics, and have been reproduced many times.[5] He also authored the section on Spanish American drama for the Handbook of Latin American Studies from 1948 to 1955. His last publication, De donde crecen las palmas (2005), is a collection that pairs some of his scholarly essays with his memoir, Recuerdos de un niño de Mayarí que viajó a la región de las nieves.[6] Jorge Ulloa Hung and Julio Corbea Calzado authored a book entitled, José Juan Arrom y la búsqueda de nuestras raíces (2011) to pay tribute to Arrom's contributions as a critic, essayist, and researcher.[5]

In 1979, when he received an award from the Hispanic Caucus of the U.S. Congress, Georgette M. Dorn of the Library of Congress interviewed him for the Library's Archive of Hispanic Literature on Tape.[7]

In March 1997, Arrom organized an exhibition at El Museo del Barrio along with Ricardo E. Alegría and Dicey Taylor. Taíno: Pre-Columbian Art and Culture from the Caribbean was the first comprehensive presentation of Taíno works in North America. Holland Cotter considered it "both a landmark of scholarly achievement and a riveting visual experience."[8]

Arrom's many honorary memberships included the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Ateneo Americano (Washington, D.C.), the Instituto de Historia del Teatro Americano (Buenos Aires), the North American Academy of the Spanish Language, the Real Academia Española de la Lengua (Spain), the Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba, and the Asociación de Lingüistas de Cuba. His awards include:

• 1938 - Hijo Ilustre de Mayarí, Cuba
• 1979 - Premio Ollantay for research in Latin American Theater, Venezuela
• 1979 - Diploma of Appreciation for Contribution to Hispanic Scholarship in America, Congressional Hispanic Caucus and National Endowment for the Humanities, U.S.
• 1982 - Profesor Honoris Causa en Letras y Artes, Universidad de la Habana, Cuba
• 1982 - Medalla Alejo Carpentier, Cuba
• 1983 - Orden Félix Varela, Primer Grado, Cuba
• 1989 - Medalla Haydée Santamaría, Casa de las Américas, Cuba
• 1991 - Orden Sol de Carabobo, Grado de Gran Oficial, Universidad de Carabobo, Venezuela
• 1994 - Doctor Honoris Causa en Filosofía y Letras, Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Puerto Rico y el Caribe, Puerto Rico