Years after the Cuban Revolution, the teenage girl Pilar Puente wants to escape the United States to go back to the place where she was born and where her grandmother lives; Cuba. On her way to Miami, where she hopes to find a boat going to the island, she delivers her thoughts about the world in which she grew up and how it is ruled by a minority of people. By having a close reading of the passage going from the second paragraph to the end of the third one on page sixty of Cristina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban, the reader is confronted to the reality that the dictatorship of only a few people over everybody’s life in the 1970’s was. Full of figures of speech, this passage emphasizes how reduced is our liberty of behaving. By making use of similes, metonymies, rhetorical questions, hyperboles and irony, the young protagonist is endowed with the voice of a feminist blaming the whole American system.

In the second sentence of the second paragraph, Pilar does a simile by comparing the mannequins of the Miracle Mile shops to “astronauts’ wives” (60). This figure of speech does not only intend to describe how the mannequins are looking but the young adolescent is mocking the hairstyle they are wearing. For her, the beehive looks like an astronaut’s helmet and is totally ridiculous. By linking this second sentence with the first one of the paragraph, one can understand that, for Pilar, what is considered as being fashionable seems very old and not innovative at all. However, what seems to shock the young girl is the fact that women would still consider this as being the new trend and are ready to spend money for it, as well as being fit enough to suit these clothing. This point of view is therefore reinforced by the third sentence, in which Pilar uses the ambiguous metonymy of the beehive to describe how shameful was the hairstyle in vogue at that time. By questioning who would find a beehive attractive, one can understand it by being the actual hairstyle, or taking it literally so Pilar would really ask how is it possible that somebody finds a real beehive attractive and wants her head to look like it. This metonymy reinforces Pilar’s point of view by pointing out what she really thinks of this haircut.

In the fourth sentence of the paragraph, Pilar expresses how angry and disgusted she is by thinking of who decides what is trendy and what is not. One can link this idea to what the young girl says earlier in the novel, when she questions “who chooses what we should know or what’s really important?” (28). She is revolted by the idea that only a few people, especially men, can decide “what’s really important” (28) or what women have to wear to be seductive. The hyperbole of “torture” (60) emphasizes the teenager’s vision of the fashion industry. It helps the reader grasp her feelings about the people who lead and dictate other’s behavior, and, in this case, women’s. One can figure out that, according to Pilar, things would have been a lot different if women were sitting in these “fashion control centers” (60). Women would not have to make all these efforts and to suffer this “torture” that the appearance is for modern society. Throughout the passage can be found other terms referring to suffering, such as “wince” (60) and “bruise” (60), which support the young girl’s voice. Pilar also repeats “new ways” (60) two times, what emphasizes the impact of her words on the reader. These “new ways to torture women” (60) are the evolution of the trend that women have to follow in order to keep up with society. After giving an anecdote about one of her friend’s mother, the young protagonist makes use of a rhetorical question in order to hit the reader’s mind directly and make him think about who is dictating the way women have to dress and what they need to like.

The third paragraph of the page sixty is very poetic. It begins with the simile “the sky looks like a big bruise of purples and oranges” (60). The sky often has the connotation of divine forces that should guide human’s behavior, especially in poetry. In this image, one could understand that, despite being beautifully colored, the sky is suffering. To emphasize this point of view, the sky is personified as suggested in the third sentence. Pilar explains how, in a land where there are not too many people, the sky would have a great impact on them, as she explains that it “announc[es] itself in a way you can’t ignore” (60). By saying that the sky can announce itself, she gives it a human, or even a divine feature. She ends the paragraph by explaining how less important is the sky, so the divine, in big cities like New York. The world leaders living there are getting more important than the sky and have a bigger impact on citizens’ mind. They are so powerful that they can compete with the sky itself.

In this passage, Garcia gives the reader the chance to question himself about who takes the decisions, about who dictate our world. Through Pilar’s mind, she denounces the injustice of the whole system, ruled by a minority of people. By using several figures of speech, she reinforces the young protagonist’s point of view and increases her impact on the reader. Her words remind us that we are not totally free in our ways of thinking and behaving and that everything is decided by only a few leaders, who can even compete with the sky.