[2] Born in Camagüey, Cuba, he studied law at the University of Havana, but abandoned a legal career and worked as both a typographer and journalist.

His poetry was published in various magazines from the early 1920s; his first collection, Motivos de son (1930) was strongly influenced by his meeting that year with the African-American poet, Langston Hughes.

After being jailed in 1936, Guillén joined the Communist Party the next year,[3] traveling to Spain for a Congress of Writers and Artists, and covering the Spanish Civil War as a magazine reporter.

This caused him to be refused a visa to enter the United States the following year, but he traveled widely during the next decades in South America, China and Europe.

Government forces assassinated Guillén's father for protesting against electoral fraud and destroyed his printing press, where Nicolás and a brother were already working.

Silvestre Revueltas's symphonic composition Sensemayá was based on Guillén's poem of the same name, and became that composer's best-known work, followed by José Limantour's suite from his film score for La noche de los mayas.

The collection stood out in the literary world because it emphasized and established the importance of Afro-Cuban culture as a valid genre in Cuban literature.

[8] In Man-Making Words: Selected Poems of Nicolás Guillén, Angel Aguier, in reference to Motivos de son, wrote that "the 'son,' a passionate dance born of the Negro-white encounter under Caribbean skies in which the words and music of the people culminate in song, is the basic substance of the elemental poetry which Guillen intuitively felt as the expression of the Cuban spirit....

"[9] This quote establishes how the son, such a profound musical genre of that time, initiated the fusion of black and white Cuban culture.

Dellita L. Martin says that "La canción del bongó" stands out as a poem because "it is the only one to indicate Guillén's painfully increasing awareness of racial conflicts in Cuba".

In February 1930, Langston Hughes traveled to Cuba for the second time, on a two-week mission to find a black composer to collaborate on a folk opera.

Guillén was especially taken with Hughes' warm personality and enthusiasm for the "son" music, which he heard on the nightly forays into Cuba's Marinao district organized by Fernandez de Castro.

[11] According to biographer Arnold Rampersad, Hughes suggested to Guillén that he make the rhythms of the son central to his poetry, as the American had used elements of blues and jazz.

Although the Cuban poet had expressed outrage against racism and economic imperialism, he had not yet done so in language inspired by Afro-Cuban speech, song, and dance.

Although Hughes did not find an Afro-Cuban composer to work with, he created a lasting friendship with Guillén; it was based on their mutual respect and convictions about racial inequality.

In 1937 he joined the Communist Party[3] and made his first trip abroad in July 1937 to attend the Second International Writers' Congress, the purpose of which was to discuss the attitude of intellectuals to the war in Spain, held in Valencia, Barcelona and Madrid and attended by many writers including André Malraux, Ernest Hemingway, Stephen Spender and Pablo Neruda.

The following year he was refused a visa to enter the United States, but he travelled widely during the next two decades in South America, China and Europe.

[2] He continued to write evocative and poignant poetry highlighting social conditions, such as "Problemas de Subdesarrollo" and "Dos Niños" (Two Children).