Lillian Manzor evinces the previously unrecognized continuities in Fornés’s material relationship to Cuba, offering new insights into her life, her work, and even her name. Because María Irene Fornés rarely wrote about Cuba, her connections to the island are usually characterized in the scholarship solely based on her place of birth, rather than on her lifelong dynamic material relationship to Cuba. Manzor argues that Fornés’s Cubanity (in contrast to the Cubanness of those who came to the US after 1959) is informed by Fornés’s heretofore undocumented direct engagement with and cultural and familial ties to the island, including her connections to Cuba, to her family that stayed on the island, to Cuban theater, her travels to Cuba, and her interest in the rhythms of Spanish and Cuban Spanish.

Luis Alfaro’s encounter with Fornés at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles inspired him to begin writing plays. In the decades since, Alfaro has become one of the most produced and most studied Chicano playwrights in the US. Here, he reflects on the interlocking webs of artistic community charted by those who carry with them Fornés’s influence as an artist and as a teacher. He also contemplates what it means to carry the Fornésian legacy through his own practice as a playwright, teacher, and community-builder.

Considering the life and influence of María Irene Fornés’s mother on her development, education, and theatrical career. This chapter follows the life of Cuban teacher, mother, and widow, Carmen Collado Fornés, who moved with her two daughters, María Irene and Margarita, to New York City in 1945, and lived with María Irene until her death in 1996. Key aspects of this chapter include Carmen Fornés’s vocation as a teacher, her influence on her daughter, and how María Irene’s role as caretaker informed her work as a theater artist and teacher.