Lydia Cabrera (May 20, 1899, in Havana, Cuba – September 19, 1991, in Miami, Florida) was a Cuban independent ethnographer, writer, and literary activist.

Her most important book is El Monte (Spanish: "The Wilderness"), which was the first major ethnographic study of Afro-Cuban traditions, herbalism and religion.

Both the literary and anthropological perspectives in Cabrera's work assume that she wrote about mainly oral, practical religions with only an “embryonic” written tradition.

Her father, Raimundo Cabrera, was a writer, lawyer, prominent man in society, and an advocate for Cuba's independence.

Her father was also the president of the first Cuban corporation, La Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País, founded in the eighteenth century.

[1] The family had many Afro-Cuban servants and child caretakers, through whom young Lydia learned about African folklore, stories, tradition, and religions.

Like the majority of wealthy Cubans in the early 1900s, the family had private tutors who came to the home of the Cabreras to educate the children.

At that time it was not socially acceptable for a woman to pursue a high school diploma, so Cabrera finished her secondary education on her own.

After graduating from Ecole du Louvre, she did not become an artist as expected, instead moving back to Cuba to study Afro-Cuban culture, especially their traditions and folklore.

Thirdly she had as a companion Teresa de la Parra, a Venezuelan novelist and socialite whom she met while studying in Europe, and who enjoyed reading Cuban books with her.

She moved to a ranch, La Quinta San Jose, in the suburb of Havana, Marianao, located just outside the barrio Pogolotti where she conducted most her research on Afro-Cuban culture.

Here, she is connecting Afro-Cuban tales with African rituals because it is important to celebrate birth, passage to adulthood, marriage, and death.

She recreated and altered elements, characters, and themes of African and universal folklore, but she also modified the traditional stories by adding details of Cuban customs of the 19th and early 20th centuries.