Monthly Archives: January 2017

The Del Pino Family in Dreaming in Cuban, Or, What the Relationships Tell about the Characters

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The relationships between the members of the family Del Pino are central in the novel Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia. The family seems to be split because of the political views, the religious beliefs, or the actual physical distance of its various members. Their interactions, their feelings, their actions and their memories reveal these dysfunctions. Celia, the matriarch of the family, will use the image of the ocean to put words on this separation she’s feeling growing between herself and the rest of her family: “[The sea] exists now so we can call and wave from opposite shores”(Garcia, 240). The main characters of the stories being women, it is mostly their relationships between each other that will be discussed. However, it seemed important to highlight the relationship that started it all.

This first relationship is the one between Jorge and Celia. From the beginning, it is clear that Celia’s heart was not completely ready for Jorge when he first started to court her. She feels betrayed when he leaves her at his mother’s home knowing how his family would treat her. She will finally learn to love him in her own way, but it will never be the passion she felt for her Spanish lover. Jorge is aware of Celia’s first lover and will make her pay that all his life. Jorge will say to his daughter: “I wanted to kill [Celia]” (Garcia, 195). This could be understood as his desire to dominate his wife in all ways possible. However, Celia lost her virginity to someone else and is not as “available for discovery, possession and conquest” as would a virgin girl be (Edwards, 97). The first relationship of the family being this bad does not give mush hope for the others coming.

Celia’s relationship with her first-born is the most strained of the novel. Their fate was sealed from the beginning, when Celia handed the baby to her husband, holding her by one leg and saying: “I will not remember her name” (Garcia, 43). Celia resents her daughter for being a girl, because had she been a boy, she would have “[left] Jorge and [sailed] for Spain, to Granada” (Garcia, 42). Instead, she feels trapped with this baby and her always-absent husband. Once Lourdes becomes an adult, the two women will disagree on everything: Lourdes believes in the capitalist system that allowed her to make a lot of money and believes that communism is all “lies, poisonous […] lies” (Garcia, 132), whereas Celia supports completely El Lider and the Revolution and “consigns her body to the sugar-cane” (Garcia, 44). Lourdes is catholic, and sends her daughter to a catholic school (Garcia, 58), whereas Celia is an atheist, since she was sent to her Tia Alicia (Garcia, 93). Lourdes fled Cuba with her husband and daughter yet Celia will always stay on her isle. Despite all these differences Celia kept her promise to “train her [daughter] to read the columns of blood and numbers in men’s eyes, to understand the morphology of survival” (Garcia, 42), and Lourdes certainly is not scared of men. She never hesitated to put herself between her husband and the armed soldier (Garcia, 70) and is the first to react and protect her daughter’s painting from an ill-intended man with a knife (Garcia, 144). But daughter and mother are two strangers to each other. Lourdes cannot deliver her father’s apologies to her mother (Garcia, 238), and Celia will never forgive Lourdes for taking her grandchildren away from her.

This mother-daughter relationship is explored further with Celia’s second child. Felicia turns to the Santeria religion in time of great need (Garcia, 12 and 185), which infuriates her mother. If Felicia does not seem against the Revolution, she does not particularly care either. She obeys her mother when Celia tells her to go to a guerrillas’ camp (Garcia, 105), but the younger woman does not have any change of heart concerning the Revolution. There still is a connection between Felicia and her mother as Celia feels it when Felicia tries to kill herself and her son and saves their lives (Garcia, 95). Their conflicts are not as clear as Lourdes and Celia’s, and Celia will “not refuse her daughter’s last request” concerning her burial as a Santeria (Garcia, 214).

Celia and Pilar have a more surprising relationship. Indeed, at first Pilar seems to be incredibly close to her grandmother and will keep talking to her at night (Garcia, 29), even when she moves to New York with her parents. But as Pilar grows up, her connection with Celia will weaken (Garcia, 137). Towards the end of the novel, Pilar will start to understand that even if she feels like a part of her is missing when she is in the United States, there is nothing for her in Cuba. She will finally lie to her Abuela when they go to try a take Ivanito back from the airport, telling her that “[She] couldn’t find him” (Garcia, 242).

Lourdes and Pilar’s relationship is very explosive. As said before, Pilar does not understand how she could be her mother’s daughter. They are always fighting each other for everything. Pilar will say that her mother’s views are “strictly black-and-white” (Garcia, 26) which she doesn’t understand. The only time the girl feels love for her mother (and expresses it), is when Lourdes blocks the attack against her daughter’s painting (Garcia, 144). At the time when she is not eating anymore, Lourdes describes her daughter has being “irresponsible, self-centered, a bad seed” (Garcia, 168). When Pilar was just a teenager, she admitted of having thought about killing her mother (Garcia, 29). The two women do not have the same interests or dreams. If Pilar wants to understand who she is, Lourdes wants to start a new life and has no desire on dwelling on the past. Rufino Puente, their husband and father, usually tempers their conflicts.

The women in Dreaming in Cuban all have very strong personalities and their conflicts are a very important part of the story. Celia’s comparison of their distanced family with the sea is quite melancholic. She says that the sea was a necessity for her and her health, but that it opened new horizons for her children, new possibilities they became conscious of. She only has Lourdes left, as Felicia died and Javier has disappeared in the mountains and is presumed dead, who actually lives away from her childhood house, and from her mother.

Bibliography:

  1. Garcia, Cristina. Dreaming in Cuban. New York: Ballantine Books, 1993.
  2. Edwards, Justin. Postcolonial literature. Chapter 9 “Gender”. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

Luz Villaverde in Dreaming in Cuban The Rift Between Felicia and her Daughters

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Extract pp.120-121, “Luckily Milagro and I have each other” to “He is her gullible ragdoll”

In Dreaming in Cuban, Cristina Garcia explores the theme of mother-daughter relationships among other things. In a part of the chapter “The Meaning of Shells”, Luz Villaverde temporarily takes over the narration. Close reading this passage allows an understanding of the difficult relationship between Felicia and her daughters through Luz’s eyes. It is the first time Felicia’s older children feelings toward their mother are expressed. It exposes how the girls live with her and her madness. This relationship is unique in the book, because the girls consciously ignore their mother and work together to erase her from their lives.

The excerpt starts with “Luckily, Milagro and I have each other” (Garcia, 120) which illustrates how the sisters handle the situation with their mother: together. Luz is conscious of their luck: they are going through the same situation and can help each other. This sentence summarises their whole relationship with each other and with their family. Indeed, if they “have each other” in such away, it is because they do not have anyone else. The use of the metaphor “We’re a double helix” (Garcia, 120) is a clever way to express the closeness of the sisters. Indeed as twins, they share the same DNA, represented by a double helix. It is then an extrapolation of a scientific truth used to give an idea of how the girls work together so that “Mamá can’t penetrate [them]” (Garcia, 120).

Luz then reports words from her mother. By quoting Felicia she wants to show her mother’s state of mind and thus brings more substance to her argument. The question: “Do you know the meaning of shells?” seems strange coming from a grown up. Indeed, it is usually young children who ask questions like this one. Felicia’s answer, though very poetic, only reinforces the absurdity of the conversation: “They’re the jewels of the goddess of the sea” (Garcia, 120). The comparisons that Felicia then makes are difficult to comprehend: “You’re my little jewel, Milagro. You, Luz, you’re the light in the night that guides our dreams” (Garcia, 120-121). If they were only a way for her to express her love to her daughters it obviously does not work in her favour but they would be understandable in a poetic way. However, if they are supposed to be interpretations of the girls’ names it does not work completely. Indeed, Luz does mean light, but as Milagro means miracle the comparison to jewels is surprising.

That part is followed by a sarcastic comment from Luz and lets the true disappointment both girls experience appear. It starts with the shortest sentence of the passage: “Pretty words” (Garcia, 121), which summarises Felicia perfectly for Luz: she is made of poetic words that her daughters do not understand, and that only her son listens to. The sentence “Meaningless words that didn’t nourish us, that didn’t comfort us, that kept us prisoners in her alphabet world” (Garcia, 121) enumerates all the reasons why the girls despise their mother. The girls will never forgive Felicia for not being a mother to them, and making them feel locked up in her madness, with no way out.

Luz then shows once again the twins’ closeness by revealing their way of distancing themselves from Felicia’s behaviour: they call her “not-Máma” (Garcia, 121). Luz chooses three examples in which they use this nickname. The first is related to everyday life in a household, highlighting their mother’s incapability of cooking a chicken without burning it and cursing. The second relates to their everyday life, when their mother dances by herself in the dark. The third starts with an apostrophe used as a warning addressed at the second sister to “watch out” for Felicia’s behaviour (Garcia, 121). The twins use this nickname “not-Máma” when Felicia’s actions are not ones of a mother, according to them.

Luz reveals that neither her nor Milagro is able to tell their mother they love her even if Felicia wants them to. Felicia’s reaction is to “[look] right past [the twins]” and Luz believes her mother is looking for another pair of daughters who could say what she wants to hear (Garcia, 121). For Luz and Milagro, not answering to their mother’s expectations is a way to stand up for themselves and show Felicia that she does not deserve their love if she cannot take care of them in the ways a mother is supposed to.

The passage concludes with the mention of Ivanito and his relationship with his mother and his sisters. The boy thinks the twins are “cruel to Mamá” (Garcia, 121), but Luz responds by stating that “[Ivanito] never saw what we saw, he never heard what we heard” (Garcia, 121). This shows the differences between the children. The older ones have known their father, who they respect more than Felicia, ready to forgive him anything and accusing their mother of having driven him away. But Hugo left before Ivanito was born and the boy only knows him through his mother’s eyes. The girls have no pity for the situation their mother was in when Hugo was around. They just do not understand why their mother chased their father away. They only see their mother’s illness and do not find it in themselves to try to understand what happened. Luz says they want to “protect” their brother from their mother’s influence and reveals “he doesn’t want to be protected” (Garcia, 121). This explains why the sisters only count on each other and why they have built a wall between themselves and the other members of their household. Luz nails the coffin of their relationship with their brother with the last sentence of the passage: “He is her gullible rag doll” (Garcia, 121), showing little mercy to either their little brother reduced to a puppet or their mother embodying the puppeteer and dismissing them for the time being.

This extract illustrates for the first time the point of view from one of Felicia’s daughter, and shows how they react to her madness, how they do not have the patience to excuse their mother’s behaviour. Garcia’s theme of mother-daughter relationship is once again explored in depth, this time by an unforgiving daughter whose only solace is found in her twin sister who is the only one who can understand everything she lives.

Memory: A Way of Expressing its own Personal Identity

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Memory: A Way of Expressing its own Personal Identity

The Different Characters’ Perceptions of Recollection in Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban

 

In Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban as well as in the chapter “Memory” in Edwards’ Postcolonial Literature textbook, the theme of memory is at the centre of attention and is addressed from different points of view. On the one hand, Edwards approaches the theme in a broader view, introducing different works from authors with different issues about memory. On the other hand, García’s novel presents an opposition between characters concerning the perception of memory. However, keywords such as truth and identity are linked to memory in both authors especially in the novel Anil’s Ghost in Edwards and related to Lourdes, Celia and Pilar in Dreaming in Cuban. Thus, in comparison to Anil’s Ghost, this is throughout the different perceptions of memory on the one side of Lourdes and Celia and on the other side of Pilar, that the women recollect past events in order to express or forge their identity.

The perception of Celia that recollection lies in the beauty of a creative memory, is linked to the freedom of expressing a personal identity. At the beginning of the novel, while Celia is cooking for her grandchildren and looking at the sea, she “realizes” (García 1992: 47) that a restricted memory is atrocious and lets no personal recollection “Memory cannot be confined, Celia realizes, looking out the kitchen window to the sea. It’s slate gray, the color of undeveloped film. Capturing images suddenly seems to her an act of cruelty.” (García 1992: 47-48). The ambiguity in the second sentence of whether the sea or the memory is “slate gray” (García 1992: 47) is open to interpretation. One possible interpretation is that even though the sea could have seemed gray, “the color of undeveloped film” (García 1992: 47-48) mainly refers to a photograph so to “confined” (García 1992: 47) memory. In this way, it is related to Celia’s viewpoint that beauty is found in the apperception and reconstruction of the authentic experience and not in captured “images” (García 1992: 48). What is more, Celia not only “realizes” that “memory cannot be confined” (García 1992: 47) but “capturing” pictures also “suddenly” appear to her as “an act of cruelty” (García 1992: 48). To some extent, these words demonstrate Celia’s rapid awareness that unforgettable and unchangeable memories are terrifying. In this way, in order to exaggerate her profound disagreement about limited memory, Celia uses the hyperbole “act of cruelty” (García 1992: 48). Thus, this liberty to recollect the events as she wants to remember can be linked to the expression of a personal identity as she is free to perceive the world as she wishes. Relatively in his Postcolonial Literature textbook, Justin D. Edwards puts in relation the recollection with personal identity as it appears in the novel Anil’s Ghost “In this narrative of recollection, we witness not an identity that is fixed and given, but improvised, constructed, negotiated in the conditions of danger and trauma.” (Edwards 2008: 137). To some extent, though Anil’s Ghost and Dreaming in Cuban are narratives about memories and the characters have the liberty to remember the events as they want, Celia does not have to confront “danger” and “trauma” (Edwards 2008: 137). In Anil’s Ghost, the protagonist Anil faces traumatic memory recovering “Sri Lanka’s national crimes and murders” (Edwards 2008: 136) in order to discover a part of her identity. In Dreaming in Cuban Celia forged her identity during the independence time in Cuba so at a time where major advances have been made in the country and living conditions were favourable. Hence, whether for Anil or Celia the identity is constructed through living memories and not an imposed recollection of the past.

Along the same lines Lourdes agrees with the perception of Celia regarding creative memory but opposes her daughter Pilar who needs the truth from the past to find her identity. Lourdes evaluates the lives of others from her point of view, which is claimed by Pilar “Mom filters other people’s lives through her distorting lens. Maybe it’s that wandering eye of hers. It makes her see only what she wants to see instead of what’s really there.” (García 1992: 176). In this saying, the vision of Lourdes that she sees and interprets the world in her own manner contrasts with Pilar’s conception of memory and past events. This latter wants to know the events as they happened so “what’s really there” and not how her mother “wants to see” them (García 1992: 176). However, each character, even Pilar, has over the years a “distorting lens” as memory selects instants it wants to keep and those it wants to forget. Thus, it increases the difficulty of recounting memories without interpretation nor a particular point of view. Following the same idea, as Felicia says to her son, retelling events or truth from the past depends on how the mind transform the facts and give them sense “Imagination, like memory, can transform lies to truths” (García 1992: 88). In other words, what is relevant is not the event itself or what happened in the past but how the characters decide to link them. In the case of Pilar who is searching her identity, having events told from a constantly changing memory of her family is insufficient. Even if she “remember[s] everything that’s happened to [her] since [she] was a baby, even word-for-word conversations” (García 1992: 26), she was only two when “[she] left Cuba” (García 1992: 26) for America. Thus, she needs original and reliable information about her grandmother and events that happened before her birth in Cuba to discover where she belongs. In this way, Dreaming in Cuban is similar to the novel Anil’s Ghost because as Edwards points out: “Anil’s Ghost is a fiction that uses memory as a subject to explore the complexities of truth.” (Edwards 2008: 137). While Anil uses her own memory to get to the truth and recovers her own history, Pilar deals with the intricacies of truth through the memory of her relatives to have her questions answered and find her identity.

To conclude, while Lourdes and Celia perceive the beauty of memory in the interpretation and rearrangement of remembrances, Pilar relies on the truth of the events. The fact that memories change throughout the years and depend on how the characters want to rally them does not concord with Pilar’s perception of memory. In this way, Lourdes and Celia express their personal identity across recollection as they are free to have their own conception of the world. On the contrary, Pilar as Anil in the novel Anil’s Ghost, focuses on the reality of what happened in Cuba or the past of her grandmother with the aim of determining her identity.

 

 

Bibliography

  • Edwards, Justin D. “Chapter Twelve: Memory.” Postcolonial Literature. New York:

Palgrave Macmillan. (2008): 129-138.

  • García, Cristina. Dreaming in Cuban. New York: Ballantine Books. 1992.

 

 

 

The Inner Conflict of Pilar: From Cuba to Brooklyn in Search of an Identity in Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban

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Dreaming in Cuban, written in 1992, is the first novel of author Cristina García, a Cuban-born American journalist and novelist. The novel takes place both in Cuba and the United States displaying three generations of a family. In this essay, the focus will be on two of the main characters namely Lourdes, one of Celia’s daughter, and Pilar, the daughter of Lourdes. The passage focuses on the analysis starting on page 137 “Most days […]” and finishing on page 138 “[…] a cut on my tongue that never healed” presents Pilar’s desire to return to Cuba and her determination to find answers concerning her native country and her mother. This is throughout the verbs choice and tense as well as figures of speech that Pilar searches her own identity in order to discover where she belongs.

Firstly, although Pilar is rebelling against the Cuban regime, she still considers herself as a Cuban and wants to return to her native country. All along the story Pilar appears as a rebellious and strong-willed teenager and in this passage she is anew intemperate saying “I resent the hell out of the politicians and the generals who force events on us that structure our lives, that dictate the memories we’ll have when we’re old” (p.138). Not only is this saying exaggerated through the hyperbole “I resent the hell out”, but also the verbs that describe how the politicians and generals act are significant: “they force events”, “structure [people’s] lives” and “dictate the memories” (p.138). To some extent, these verbs are representing the precept of the communism which is the control of the country by the state letting no liberty and choices for the citizens. Thus, on the one hand Pilar’s youth and character lead her to amplify her saying but on the other hand she is mindful of what happens in Cuba under the communist regime. Though Pilar does not agree with the whole Cuban regime and lives in the United States for a long time, she still considers herself as a Cuban speaking in the first person plural: “who force events on us”, “structure our lives” and “the memories we’ll have […] we’re old” (p.138). To some extent, Pilar shows her belonging to Cuba through the we-pronoun. In addition to, she expresses a wish to return to her native country claiming: “Every day Cuba fades a little more inside me, my grandmother fades a little more inside me.” (p.138). The repetition underlines Pilar’s desire to visit Cuba and her grandmother in order to strengthen the decreasing relations with her roots. Then, before her return to Cuba and the answers to questions that have remained open for years, Pilar can only imagine “where [her] history should be.” (p.138). Relatively, because of her life in Brooklyn and the refusal of her mother to talk about Abuela Celia and Cuba, this is through her imagination that Pilar maintains her links to Cuba.

At this point, Pilar not only wants to return to Cuba to see her grandmother and to visit the country but also because she is searching her identity. Through the verbs choice and tense used by Pilar, she questions herself and her relatives about her roots. Most of the verbs used by Pilar are in the present tense signifying that she speaks at the same time the plot takes place. All along the passage, the verbs either describe her thoughts and feelings “I resent” and “I think” twice, her determination “I can” and “I want” or her questioning “I ask” and “I’m prying” (p.138). Concerning Pilar’s thinking “I think he stays in his workshop” and “I think we should have moved to a ranch” (p.138), the situation is hypothetical because that is only what Pilar believes about her father but nothing is confirmed. Then, Pilar shows once more that she is perseverant and self-confident using two modal verbs “I can do not to hijack a plane to Havana” and “I really want to know, why mum hardly speaks to Abuela” (p.138). The context in which she uses “can” shows that it is not a question of physical capacity but of permission. Pilar cannot “hijack a plane to Havana” (p.138) because it is an illegal act which is punishable by law.  Moreover, when Pilar asks her father about her mother and Cuba this is because she “really want[s]” explanations of why her mother “keeps her riding crops from Cuba” (p.138). While she has a strong wish which is accentuated with the adverb “really” placed before “want” (p.138), the phrase “keeps her riding crops from Cuba” bears a deep meaning. Pilar makes a connection with what happened to Lourdes in Cuba such as the rejection of her mother (p.48), the loss of her child (p.70), and the violent rape by a soldier (p.71) without knowing these facts. Finally, Pilar “ask[s]” her mother about Abuela Celia and has the feeling of “prying” into secret information. These two verbs imply the desire to have answers which is what Pilar aims for. Thus, even though Pilar has a strong desire to learn about her roots and grandmother and is aware that Lourdes has bad memories concerning Cuba, she is determinate to find where she belongs.

Following this, Pilar’s lack of knowledge about the exact events that happened to her mother in Cuba makes her feeling resentful towards Lourdes and this adds to the recurrent mother-daughter conflicts. Pilar wants to learn about her grandmother Celia, nonetheless each time she asks her mother about it “she gets annoyed” and “shuts [her] up quickly, like [she’s] prying into top secret information” (p.138). The irony of Pilar in the phrase “top secret information” shows her ignorance concerning the reason why her mother is distant with Celia. What is more, Pilar’s father accentuates the contrast between Lourdes and Pilar when this latter questions him “why [her] Mom hardly speaks to Abuela or why she still keeps her riding crops from Cuba.” (P.138). Most of the time he answers “refeering the fights” (p.138) between Lourdes and Pilar instead of the question. Consequently, due to the paucity of information about the past of her mother as well as their constant conflicts about the revolution and Cuba, Pilar has to face at a time a mother-daughter conflict and an inner-conflict linked to the search of her identity.

To conclude, the omnipresence of Pilar’s search of identity is seen through a desire to return to the country and her perseverance to obtain information from her relatives. Additionally, the verbs used by Pilar are meaningful and affirm her determination and her importance of where she belongs. However, the contrast with her mother’s view as well as the lack of information about her life leave Pilar in an inner conflict of discovering if she is a Cuban, American or hybrid girl.