Everyone in Cristina García’s postcolonial novel Dreaming in Cuban has been displaced: some by exile, some by madness, some by family crises. The novel reveals the similarities and differences of the scattered characters’ varying experiences through the historical, cultural and personal memories which connect them to each other. García employs the narrative structure as a rhetorical tool by making it dependant on changing narrative perspective. By moving between early and mid-twentieth century Cuba and the United States, the characters of the novel are defined through their collective memories. The three generations of the del Pino family – Celia, Lourdes and Pilar – inhabit the space between past actualities and deceptive memories as playing a pivotal role in their respective lives. The different narrative voices of these women show memory as dependent on perspective, creating in turn, individualized historical truth.

Pilar, as a limited first person narrator, notices the fine line between the actual recollection of the past and its distortion into fiction, and is frustrated that she has to rely on what other people value as important in order to create her cultural and political history. In Postcolonial Literature, in the chapter on Memory, Justin D. Edwards cites the Caribbean poet and play writer Derek Walcott who highlights this fine line by defining history as “a complex negotiation between memory, forgetting and fiction.“ (Walcott: in Edwards 2008: 132). The term “negotiation” accurately describes the complex compromise that has to be made in order to represent history. The choice of integrating some facts, will leave others out and it is impossible to authentically represent the past. Pilar argues that “we only know about Charlemagne and Napoleon because they fought their way into prosperity” (García 1992: 28). The synecdoche of famous characters such as “Charlemagne” and “Napoleon” represents the winners of history who have whole history books dedicated to them. For Pilar and her precursors the physical fight that brought them to the present, is merely a narrated memory of unmentioned battles. The use of the nature-based metaphor “prosperity” is a further tool, to create a circular notion of thriving, prospering and decaying. Characters such as Napoleon or Charlemagne are being eternalized in history books and prevented from historical decay. Pilar defies this sole historic truth and states that “If it were up to me, I’d record other things.” (García 1992: 28). The linguistic use of the conditional tense “were” and “I’d” highlights the unlikeliness of an ordinary female middle class character to make decisions on what to document and what not. Pilar further develops what “other things” she would record, such as “the time there was a freak hailstorm in the Congo and the women took it as a sign that they should rule. Or the life stories of prostitutes in Bombay.” (García, 28). Nothing is known about these events and about these women, due to historians’ decisions. The two rhetorical questions asked by Pilar “Why don’t I know anything about them? Who chooses what we should know or what’s important?” show to what extent she is questioning our common knowledge (García 1992: 28). History is not a proof of what really happened, but rather a choice of perspective by people in power.

Lourdes, as well as Historians, creates her own truth by choosing a perspective on events and people. Although she does not speak in first person narration[1], Lourdes’ character is revealed through an external narrator and  through other characters’ supplements. Pilar observes that “Mom [Lourdes] filters other people’s lives through her distorting lens.” (García 1992:176). Through the lexical field of photography (“filters”, “lens”), the reader is confronted with a paradox. On the metaphorical level the concept of a photograph is as an excerpt of an immutable truth. Lourdes is portrayed as choosing a certain perspective and therefore distorting reality. Opposing “what is really there” with “what she wants to see”, Pilar stresses the difference between the two and that Lourdes makes a choice of the way she portrays her own memory (García 1992: 176). Lourdes judges events she was not present at and although these events are static, the interpretation and focus change with time. What happened in the past is not as pivotal as how we choose to reassemble it. What we remember and what we choose to forget is who we are, it constructs our identity. Edwards paraphrases Jamaica Kincaid’s statement about selective memory, who states that: „This process of erasure is a way of controlling and manipulating stories about the past“ (Kincaid: in Edwards 2008: 132). The importance of this “process of erasure”, is that it has the power to create a new truth by choosing what we see and also what we do not see.

Celia’s narrative switches between a limited first person narration in her expressive letters, as well as a third person narration that is generally limited to her own observations and thoughts. For her, the beauty of recollection lies in the ability to interpret and rearrange the original experience at will and “Capturing images suddenly seems to her [Celia’s] an act of cruelty” (García 1992: 48). Images suspend the possibility of rearranging the past, but rather present a given frame of an excerpt of truth. The hyperbolical portray of images as an “act of cruelty”, stresses Celia’s resentment to fixing memories that can never be changed nor forgotten.  Reflecting that “memories cannot be confined” Celia reasons with the metaphor “to imprison emotions of glossy paper” to show that memories should not be rigid and eternized (García, 47-49). Contrasting Celia’s attitude towards “imprisoned emotions” on images, is Celia’s action of writing letters for 25 years on the eleventh of each month to her Spanish lover Gustavo, without ever sending them off (García 1992: 36). By writing her personal truth on paper from 1935 to 1959, Celia restricts her memories to momentary choices that will remain unchangeable on paper. After having intermitted the structure of the novel various times through Celia’s letters, the novel ends with Celia’s last line “She [Pilar] will remember everything.” (García 1992: 245). The use of the hyperbole “everything”, shows Celia’s hope of finally letting her memories keep living in another form than through unsent letters. Celia sees them safe in her granddaughter’s hands, giving Pilar the choice of perspective to create a new historical truth.

Through the narratives, constructed of the three generations del Pino women, it becomes evident, that history is not a proof of reality but rather a choice of perspective. Memories do not portray the complete truth of history and just because something is history does not mean that it represents individual memories. Pilar, as a central first person narrator, stays close to narrating her own perspective of people and situations. Lourdes, through Pilar’s narration, embodies the choice between remembering certain aspects and forgetting others, to create new historical truths that give the characters the power to control and manipulate their past. Celia’s narratives switch between a limited first person narration in her expressive letters, as well as a third person narrator generally limited to her own observations and thoughts. Thus, narrative perspective is used as a powerful tool to intertwine different characters’ realities in Dreaming in Cuban. What we hear is an opinion not a fact and history, created of memories, is one perspective not the sole truth.

Wordcount: 1214 words

Bibliography:

• Edwards, Justin D. “Chapter Twelve: Memory.” Postcolonial Literature. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
• García, Cristina. Dreaming in Cuban. New York: Ballantine Books, 1992

[1] Except when she has visions of her dead father.