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