The occult is a central theme in Cristina García’s novel, “Dreaming in Cuban”. For instance, at the very beginning of the story, Jorge del Pino’s ghost appears to say goodbye to his wife, Celia, then frequently visits his daughter Lourdes. In addition, Felicia’s passion for the occult is clear as she devotes herself entirely to Santería, and even Pilar turns to the mystical cult when in doubt. As Justin Edwards points out, haunting is a recurrent trope in postcolonial literature, where “narratives deal with history in the forms of phantoms, revenants and ghosts that return from the past to haunt the present” (Edwards, 124). However, in “Dreaming in Cuban”, by using Jorge’s ghost and numerous references to the Santería cult, García gives her characters a means of dealing with and recovering from a painful past.

Felicia’s character is the most strikingly linked to the occult. Amanda Easton argues that “emotional and physical traumas […] compel Felicia to seek out a curative relief, a means of release” and that “Santeria proves to be that source of holistic healing” (Easton, 8). Truly, we can agree that Felicia appears as a mentally troubled character, but seems completely at peace with herself, or “holistically healed” shortly before her death. Although her fascination for this religion is present throughout the novel, Felicia’s troubled mind finally finds solace when she bestows herself fully to Santeria, as Herminia explains on page 186:

At night, Felicia attended our ceremonies. She didn’t miss a single one. For her, they were a kind of poetry that connected her to larger worlds, worlds alive and infinite. Our rituals healed her, made her believe again. My father used to say that there are forces in the universe that can transform our lives if only we’d surrender ourselves. Felicia surrendered, and found her fulfilment (García, 186).

In this extract, the form of the text conveys the idea of yielding to supernatural entities, and the resulting plenitude. Indeed, we may notice that Felicia is mostly in a passive mode, as she allows the paranormal to “connect her to larger worlds” (186), “heal her” (186) and “make her believe again” (186), thereby perfectly illustrating the idea of surrendering. Additionally, the fact that the “worlds” (186) are described with lively and hyperbolic “infinite” (186) attributes supposes a superior force, thus giving the superhuman dimension to the text. As a result, Felicia’s experienced fulfilment can be literally translated into a plenitude induced by letting herself become “filled” with these spirits’ energies. We can therefore agree with Easton’s claim, and affirm that Felicia finds her inner peace and healing from her physical and mental sufferings by surrendering to the mysteries of Santería.

Although she does not share Felicia’s fervent beliefs, the hybrid character of Pilar also happens to turn to Santería, in search for answers she is unable to find anywhere else. Easton once again asserts that “Pilar, like Felicia, seeks out Santeria as a means of healing and an alternative system of negotiating the world around her” (Easton, 5). This statement can be illustrated as Pilar returns from the botánica shop, and heads the old man’s counsel, by bathing in an herbal mix for nine nights. As she prepares herself to bathe in the last paragraph of page 202, Pilar perceives the world in a very confusing way: “In the library, nothing makes sense. The fluorescent lights transmit conversations from passing cars on Broadway” (García, 202). In this last sentence, there is an impossible connection between light and sound, as conversations seem conveyed by light. This paradox only reflects the state of confusion in which Pilar finds herself, as it is followed by several short phrases: “Someone’s ordering a bucket of chicken wings on 103^rd Street. The chairman of the linguistics department is fucking a graduate student named Betsy. Gandhi was a carnivore […] Maybe this is the truth” (García, 202). These sentences hardly have any link with one another, and reflect the noises and conversations Pilar hears in the library around her. By compressing so much arbitrary information in several short sentences, with very little to no transition between the different elements, García gives the text an overloaded feeling, thus translating Pilar’s own uncertainty and confusion. Further, as Pilar enters her bath, her senses are again stimulated, however contrasting with the sensual overload of the first paragraph, in a more orderly fashion, as each perception comes one at a time, in a continuity: she sees the “clear green” (203) of the bath, smells its “sharp scent” (203), and feels “cold dry ice, then a soporific heat” (203). Finally, the solution is presented with an unshakable clarity: “On the ninth day of my baths, I call my mother and tell her we’re going to Cuba” (203). Hence, we can conclude from this passage that Santería appeals to Pilar as a solution resonant of clarity, or what Easton calls “an alternative system of negotiating the world” (Easton, 5), in response to uncertainties of her surroundings she is otherwise unable to unveil.

Finally, the most present haunting figure of the novel is Jorge’s ghost. Edwards shows different uses of haunting in postcolonial literature, among which he suggests its representing of “the wounds of the past and the healing of the future” (Edwards, 120). Indeed, through his apparitions to Lourdes, Jorge seems to want to repair the wounds he has left his family. This is made clear in Lourdes’ last encounter with her father’s phantom. Before leaving for good, he tells his daughter secrets about his early life with Celia, before admonishing Lourdes to return to Cuba. Jorge for instance mentions how he tried to control his wife, then his daughter: “I tried to kill her, Lourdes. I wanted to kill her […] I wanted to break her, may God forgive me.[…] I told the doctors to make her forget […] I took you from her while you were still a part of her. I wanted to own you for myself” (García, 196). In his speech, Jorge seldom mentions Celia’s actions, he rather speaks in the first person, giving his monologue a tone of confession. However, this speach is not only meant for Jorge to leave with a clean conscience, his purpose in telling his daughter about the past is rather to heal her and his family of the pain he has caused them. We feel the soothing intention in his words as he tells Lourdes: “Your mother loved you” (196), as Lourdes has never felt motherly love from Celia. Finally, in a similar way to Pilar’s bath ritual, Jorge provides the clear instruction: “Please return and tell your mother everything, tell her I’m sorry” (197). Consequently, we can conclude from this passage that Jorge returns to his daughter in an attempt to make amends for the past, and is yet another supernatural figure García uses to guide her characters.

As a conclusion, we can therefore assert that in “Dreaming in Cuban”, García displays supernatural and haunting figures as a means of healing for her characters’ different forms of suffering. Felicia turns to Santería to find inner peace, as for Pilar, the mystic practice helps her make sense of a world she is at times unable to read and find her hybrid identity. Finally, Jorge’s ghost transmits a desire of exposing the past in hopes of helping his beloved daughter and family to recover from it.

Works cited:

Easton, Amanda. “A Space for Resistance and Possibility: Confronting Borders through

Narrative and Santería in Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban”. Label me Latina/o, Fall 2013 Volume 3.

Edwards, Justin. “Haunting”. Postcolonial Literature. Tredell Nicolas.  London: Macmillan, 2008. 117-128.

García, Cristina. Dreaming in Cuban : a novel. New York: Ballantine Books, 1993.

The novel Dreaming in Cuban written by Cristina García, often addresses the theme of memory, which can be either personal or cultural, and which brings on various other sub-themes such as identity, legacy, and distortion. It is through the analysis of these sub-themes and with the help of the author’s interview as well as Justin D. Edwards’s chapter on Posctolonial Literature, that the reader will be able to determine how important memory is to the construction of the main characters’s truth.

In the book’s reader’s guide, Cristina García explains how memory comes as a “need [for her characters] to reinvent themselves and invest themselves in narratives of their own devising” (García 255). Pilar does feel this need as she devotes herself to “[record] everything down” (García 7) in a diary, making sure that no details of her life are left behind. In fact, she later adds that she made sure to “remember[s] everything that’s happened to [her] since [she] was a baby, even word-for-word conversations” (García 26). According to the Cambridge Dictionary, the verb “to remember” means “to keep a piece of information in your memory,”¹ however in this quote Pilar affirms that she has a memory of every single event that has happened in her life. Indeed, this precision can be seen in her use of the pronoun “everything,” the use of the adverb “even” and the expression “word-to-word.” Although this could be read as being hyperbolic, it shows how important memory is for her, especially since she does not allow any detail of her life to be forgotten. To get a true sense of her identity however, Pilar needs to understand where she comes from and her memory alone is not enough as she says that “[e]veryday Cuba fades a little more inside [her]” (García 138). Since she lived most of her life in the United States and did not really experience the Revolution, Pilar has a lack of knowledge regarding her native country and its past. Indeed, she “do[es] not have [any] personal memories of the hardships, exploitation, cruelty and torture” her ancestors have endured, thus she needs stories which, as Edwards writes in his chapter, “fill in [the] past-narratives [to] help [one] remember where [one] come[s] from” (Edwards 129). These stories can come from people she has talked to as well as books she has read.

When trying to fill the gaps between her own memory and the history of Cuba, Pilar is soon faced with disappointment after she finds out no one has covered subjects she would have been interested in, like the hailstorm in Congo (García 28) for example. History books are thus incomplete, as she realizes that “there’s only my imagination where our history should be” (García 138). The use of the verb “shall” expresses that her expectations have not been met and the adjective “only” emphasizes the fact that imagination is not enough since it is not reliable. In this respect, the author of the novel states in the reader’s guide, that memory is “a product of both necessity and imagination” (García 255). Pilar has the urge to know her cuban history and believes it is the duty of her ancestors to share their history and not hers to create one. At one point, Pilar asks the rhetorical question: “Who chooses what we should know or what’s important?” (García 28) which she later replies to by stating that it is “the politicians and the generals” who she “resent[s] the hell out [and] who force events on [them] [to] rupture [their] lives, that dictate the memories [they]’ll have when [they]’re old.” (García 137-8). The use of the words “resent” and “hell” show how outraged Pilar is, while the use of the verbs “to force” and “to dictate” highlights how powerless she feels before the politicians and the generals. She also feels disgusted “that men who had nothing to do with [her] had the power to rupture [her] dreams” (García 199-200). In parallel, Herminia also feels angry and powerless in front of those who get to decide what is important, as her black ancestors are “only [considered] a footnote in [these] historybooks” (García 185) which is merely nothing. In this regard, Edwards states that “colonial narratives often try to influence collective memory and stories of the past by white-washing the history of conflict, violence and trauma” (Edwards 130). With the term “white-washing,” Edwards means that history is often told by the colonizers’s point of view, while the colonized’s perspective is not taken into account or deliberately forgotten. In Edwards’s chapter, Kincaid claims that “[w]ithout responsibility, there can be no apology, reparation or forgiveness” (Edwards 131). Since the colonizers do not take responsibility for their past actions against african and caribbean people, it is impossible for either Pilar or Herminia to forgive them. Having a collective memory is thus very important since it “plays a significant part in the symbolic relationship between the mother country (the imperial power) and the infantilized nation (the colony)” (Edwards 131). This symbolic relationship is what both Herminia and Pilar strive for, as it would help them find a proper balance in their hybridity, as well as finally find their own true identity. Yet, the informations they get in these history books are only one sided, which means that one part of their identity is totally disregarded. This is the reason why Herminia also questions how she can “trust anything [she] read[s]?” (García 185) which she then answers to herself by stating that she can “[only] trust what [she] see[s]” and “what [she] know[s]” and “nothing more” (García 185). Because of the biased perspective and selective memory of historical books, Herminia feels as if she has no choice left but to trust her own memory exclusively.

According to Celia, “memory cannot be confined” (García 47), which she explains with the example of selling cameras. She believes, in fact, that it is an “act of cruelty” and “atrocity” to sell those as they “imprison emotions on squares of glossy paper” (García 48). She is personally all about writing down her own memories since the act of writing is a “solitary act” (Edwards 43) that lacks the immediacy of photography. Indeed, writing allows her to explore her emotions with all the time she needs as well as to rearrange her memories the way she likes, which is not possible with photography. The last time Celia writes to Gustavo is actually the day Pilar is born. Indeed, she tells Gustavo: “I will no longer write to you, mi amor. [Pilar] will remember everything” (García 245). The fact that Celia no longer needs to write to her Spanish lover is because she finally has someone she can bequeath her memories to. Indeed, Gustavo only represents an idea, since she does not actually send her letters to him. The author of the novel herself, explains that “the letters provide a window into her inner life and yearnings” (García 252). Furthermore, Celia states that “only [her] granddaughter can save [her]” and “guard [her] knowledge like the first fire” (García 222). For Celia, being saved means that someone is going to protect what she values the most, which is her “knowledge.” Cristina García declares in her interview that each of her characters “needs to be a heroine, to believe [they] [are] doing the right thing, choosing the only path to a kind of personal redemption,” she also adds that “[t]hey need their memories in this sense to survive” (García 255). The fact that Celia shares a “box of letters she wrote to her onetime lover in Spain” (García 235) with her granddaughter, is actually the only path for her to attain “a personal redemption” (García 255). By sharing these letters, Celia actually “offers a sense of collective identity” to her granddaughter, which is very important as Edwards himself states that it “links the past with the present” (Edwards 129): the past being Abuela Celia and the present being Pilar. The latter, starts to feel differently after receiving her grandmother’s legacy. Indeed, shortly after she “feel[s] [her] grandmother’s life passing to [her],” she feels “a steady electricity, humming and true” (García 222). She also starts to have dreams in Spanish, which she insists “has never happened before” (García 235). These changes happen because she finally knows where she belongs. Indeed, the lack of information she had about her cuban ancestors is now filled in with her grandmother’s legacy of her memory.

One may argue, indeed, that Celia’s letters are based on her own perception of reality. In this respect, Edwards states that “memory is not always perfect; it can distort or change information” (Edwards 41). Felicia also believes that, as she tells her son Ivanito that: “[i]magination, like memory, can transform lies to truths” (García 88). Indeed, memory is very powerful in the way that it can change someone’s opinion on a memory or on the opposite, make someone keep their opinion. Both cases can be seen many times in the book, as a shared event is told various times by different characters. This causes each character to have their own sense of what is true and what is not. For example, Lourdes and her parents each believe the veracity of their own memory of a shared event. Lourdes has always believed that her mother had intentionally abandoned her but it appears that she was missing an essential piece of the puzzle. Indeed, her father later confessed to her that he was the one that “tried to kill” and “to break” her mother until the point where “[s]he held [Lourdes] out to [him] by one leg and told [him] she would not remember her [daughter’s] name” (García 195). Although Jorge shared his truth, Lourdes decides not to believe it and holds on to her own truth:
She knows that she cannot keep her promise to her father, to tell her mother that he was sorry, sorry for sending her away, sorry for her silent hands. The words refuse to form in her mouth. Instead, like a brutal punishment, Lourdes feels the grip of her mother’s hand, hears her mother’s words before she left for the asylum: “I will not remember her name.” (García 238)
In a way, Lourdes both punishes herself as well as her parents by deciding to keep her own truth and neglecting theirs. A shared memory can thus be extremely distorted, since one person can perceive a truth as a lie, and vice-versa.

In conclusion, it is important to note how memory is closely connected to each character’s sense of self. While some characters are eager to receive another person’s memory in order to complete the missing bits of theirs, others prefer to stay completely in their own truth and avoid other’s perspectives.

Bibliography:

• Edwards, D. Justin. Postcolonial Literature. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

• García, Cristina. Dreaming in Cuban : a novel. New York: Ballantine Books, 1993.

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The close connection between Diaspora and other themes of Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia

In Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia, the diaspora is a central theme. By definition, the word diaspora “refers to people who have been dispersed, displaced or dislocated from their homeland”. In Cuba, around the 1960’s many Cubans flew the country and went mostly to the United States. Through this huge movement, the people who immigrated built a new life and a new community in the United States. In other words, the diaspora permits to the immigrated people to create a new culture. This theme and the context of it appears in the novel to help the reader to understand better some of the characters and it is intertwined with others themes such as identity and hybridity. The common feature between these three themes is the creation of a new culture and the trace it lets behind it. In addition, all along the novel, the definition of diaspora constantly changes and tends to demonstrate that not only the fact of moving from a country is an exile.

The diasporic process can be seen with many points of view, which are many characters, particularly Lourdes Puente, her daughter Pilar and Celia del Pino. The beginning of the novel show that Lourdes Puente is assimilated to the American culture; she is building her life in New York with her family (her husband and her daughter) and owns a bakery that marks her independence. Obviously, she is not the only one to have escaped from a political conflict or anything else that brings people to migrate. For example, she lives in Brooklyn where a majority of Jews moved: “Lourdes bought the bakery five years ago from a French-Austrian Jew who had migrated to Brooklyn after the war” (18). The diaspora is set up with the words “Jew” and the “war”. The importance is that the reader sees the diasporic process as a globalization of the immigration. Again, the Jews are mentioned by Pilar: “I felts sorry for the Jews getting thrown out of Egypt and having to drag themselves across the desert to find a new home” (Garcia, 58). The word “home” is something related with many postcolonial novels as Justin D. Edwards mentions it in his book Postcolonial Literature in the chapter “Diaspora”. Actually, he depicts the word “home” with many authors for example “from this perspective […] home is a word that is often burdened with a complicated historical and geographical weight” (151). This sentence reveals that the word “home” has a heavy meaning for the people “victim” of diaspora, they do not have a “real” home because of the constrained of building a new life. The word “home” is a key element for the theme of the diaspora, it emphasizes on the fact that the novelty of the situation, constrains people living in another way, which are the results hybridity; they are mixed with another culture and theirs at the same time.

The complexity of diaspora is that hybridity and identity are closely linked to it and are its consequence. Pilar Puente is surely the most representative of these themes. Pilar is the character that mostly searches her identity and wants responses by returning to Cuba: “Even though I’ve been living in Brooklyn all my life, it doesn’t feel home to home to me. I’m not sure Cuba is but I want to find out” (58). As said before, the word “home” is something very important that Pilar intensifies with her decision of going to Cuba. That is to say, that in hybridity, the people descendant from different cultures and living in another country are continually caught between two stools because of the culture shock they are confronted with. Moreover, Edwards in the chapter concerning the diaspora demonstrates that by mentioning two authors (Braziel and Mannur), both have theorized that: “diasporic communities develop their own particular forms of hybridity and heterogeneity in specific cultural, linguistic, ethnic and national contexts” (156). Again, it reveals that the mixed culture of those communities grows with the environment in which they are living.

“Diaspora identities are those which are constantly producing and reproducing themselves anew, through transformation and difference” (158). This sentence clearly illustrates and define the hidden meaning of “diaspora”. There is a need of change; this change sounds like a revival that obligates people to adapt themselves to the world, bringing some new features. For example, when Pilar and Lourdes are dancing and she is watching at her daughter dancing “Pilar looked so clumsy last night […] She dances like an American” (224). The comparison with the Americans who are known not to being coordinate but “clumsy” intensifies the fact that Pilar has not taken the Cuban rhythm concerning the dancing. Again, the mix of culture is visible due to the diaspora and Lourdes illustrates it. What is difficult in diaspora is to adapt itself; furthermore, it could be compared to an exchange between two cultures that open one to each other. This exchange is made by means of comprehension and integration on each side and not only by the point of view of the people who immigrate.

To conclude, more than a half of the population on earth had once to migrate and History proved that new cultures are the consequences of a diaspora. The diaspora concerns many characters in the novel and we can see that this theme has a connection with others. The diaspora helps to create an identity and diverse cultures. Hybridity and identity tend to be two themes in the novel that are closely attached with diaspora, these questions of identity are recurrent in the novel and Dreaming in Cuban has a well attachment to diaspora, by that we could ask us if the author did not want to explain her own experience.

Bibliography:

Edwards, Justin D., Postcolonial Literature (chapter Diaspora), ed. Palgrave MacMillan, 2008 Garcia, Cristina, Dreaming in Cuban, ed. Ballantine Book, 1993

The irony of language used by the character of Pilar in Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia

Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia is a novel where the reader can approach the characters and make his own opinion about them by their language, their feelings, their thoughts, their background, etc. Furthermore, the narration gives to the reader the impression of being close to the characters. Some of them narrate the story in the first person and others on the third. Obviously, the first person brings the orality to the novel and the third person makes it more “formal” or more poetic. In this work, we will focus on Pilar Puente who is a round character that uses the first person. The passage at page 62 beginning with “I get discouraged […]” until “[…] here to complain” page 63 shows the relationship Pilar has with her mother (Lourdes Puente). The use of irony is recurrent and this has an impact on the text, on the meaning and on the reader. The effects of irony also have an impact on the nature of the relationship of Pilar and her mother.

Based on the feelings of Pilar, she seems being tired of what she is doing; she asks herself “Like what am I? A fugitive from my mother’s Bakery?” (62), the direct speech and the rhetorical questions she uses, express what she feels and reveal her tiredness towards the events happening. These rhetorical questions also reveal her need of identity; all along the passage, her identity is questioned. She went to Miami to ease her escape to Cuba but once arrived, she seems to have forgotten her objective: “I get discouraged. I look in through the rest of the windows without even trying to hide” (62), again her tiredness can be felt by her discourse and it avoids her capacity of staying focused on her purpose. Even though, the personification “the clouds speed through the darkening skies, probably headed to Cuba” (62) divulges that she watches the clouds and thinks about Cuba. There is a kind of paradox between her search of identity and her sudden questioning. Later in the passage, she also thinks her mother cannot change her “She tells me […] is more frustration at what she can’t change. I guess I’m of those things she can’t change” (63). The repetition of “she can’t change” reveal the certitude of Pilar of being a problem for her mother, so it can be interpreted again as the identity Pilar is searching.

Despite her search of identity, similes are a characteristic of Pilar’s language, “she can look like the dogs guarding hell, except she sounds more like a terrier or a Chihuahua” (63). In this sentence, Pilar talks about her mother and imagines her mother’s face when she will discover that her daughter ran away. The first part of the sentence, “she can look like the dogs guarding hell”, in many religious beliefs, the dogs guarding hell are the symbol of ferocity and animosity, it emphasize on the fact that her mother just “look” like them but it does not make her a bad person. Actually, the comparison: “she sounds more like a Terrier or a Chihuahua” reveals that Lourdes is not as mean as the reader can think because these two breeds of dogs are known to be only bad-tempered dogs and no aggressive. The opposition of those dogs is manifest and Pilar uses this simile ironically. By applying the irony, the narrator portrays Lourdes’ personality. Moreover, the metaphor “In her hands, bedroom slippers are lethal weapons” (63) puts the severity of Lourdes forward and the fact that she “can get pretty violent” (63) reveals that Lourdes even though has a certain authority on Pilar, this power is developed later by turning back to the past.

The authority of Lourdes is accentuated with a contrast between the past and the present; Pilar describes how her mother was respected in Cuba and how she is not in the United States: “Back in Cuba, everybody used to treat Mom with respect. Their backs would straighten and they’d put attentive faces like their lives depended on the bolt of fabric she chose” (63). “Back in Cuba”, is the reference to the past and the hyperbole of “like their lives depended on the bolt of fabric she chose” is used to show how much respect people had for Lourdes in Cuba. The sentence intensifies the link between the word “lives” and the second part of the sentence, “the bolt of fabric she chose” and these statements have their own grade of significance. Actually, “lives” is more important than the second part of the sentence and the hyperbole shows the reader the power Lourdes had in Cuba. Quite the opposite in the United States where: “These days, all the neighborhood merchants hate her” (63). We are back to the present by “these days” and then this ironic metaphor made in direct speech: “Where are the knobs, kid?” they ask me when her volume goes up” (63), is linked with her bad temper and the similes of the “Chihuahua” and the “Terrier”. The irony of Pilar’s language is also visible when she makes a joke about her mother and the fact she is always complaining about the items she buys. “One day, she’ll walk into a department store […] Congratulations, Mrs. Puente! This marks the thousandth time you’ve come in here to complain!” (63). The irony of language that Pilar uses, creates humour. In other words, it can be interpreted as she is mocking her mother. Again, the fact this joke is told in the first person brings orality to the text and makes the reader closer to it. Pilar is telling that because she reports the fact her mother is hateful when she wants to complain or even when she tries to straighten out Pilar.

In conclusion, the irony Pilar uses, is to bring a certain orality to the text; every word of the first person has a humoristic impact on the reader. He understands quickly that Pilar is very serious about what she thinks. That also makes the meaning and the form connected to each other, and that the novel Dreaming in Cuban is written without any artifices.