Deconstruction of the Classical Way of Writing

Reversal of power in Christina Garcia’s “Dreaming in Cuban”

In “Dreaming in Cuban” Christina Garcia’s post-colonial narrative, power is a central theme. At the time when the book was written, power was usually associated to white, wealthy, upper class men and it was mostly them who also ruled History writing. Women and lower class people were not giving any voice and this created a lack in the historical perspective of events. This patriarchal superiority and women oppression and oblivion are also deeply debated in Justin D. Edwards’ “Postcolonial Literature” and “Understanding Jamaica Kincaid”, where an alternative storytelling is evoked, to counteract this empirical point of view. In this novel, Cristina García highlights a whole new aspect of power that breaks with classical rules, by giving a voice to those who were considered not being in power and forgotten by history, thus including mostly women and black people as narrative voices, in order to show another side of mythologization.

In García’s book, power reveals to be a very complex theme that can be analyzed in many aspects, as it has so different demonstrations. First of all, if we take account of the fact that men were always described as the ones in power, it is not astonishing to observe that in this novel there are some passages that depict perfectly this classical tradition too. For example, in the last part of the book, where Jorge confesses to his daughter Lourdes his actions towards his wife Celia, we can observe that he used his male power to overpower her. This moment sets the male dominant atmosphere where women are made invisible. Celia is in a vulnerable position as she is the victim because of male domination. In fact, Jorge says: “After we married, (…) A part of me wanted to punish her. For the Spaniard. I tried to kill her (…) I wanted to break her,” (p. 195) giving for reason to this psychological violence the fact that he wanted Celia to be punished for having another man before him. Most of all, this man was a stranger, a “colonizer” that possessed what was supposed to be his. This possession term remembers us the relationship between colonizer and colonized, where women were often used to embody the conquered land and sexually possessed to emphasize this male dominance. Edwards describes this sexist behavior in his book about post-colonial literature, when he writes that Haggard’s map is a “patriarchal fantasy that feminizes the colonial territory and, in turn, subjugates it to the imagined dominance of male phallic power.” (Edwards 96) meaning that women are metaphorically like a piece of land waiting to be possessed.  Furthermore, as McClintock depicts the women in post-colonial discourses as “sexually available, exotic and erotic” (Edwards 97), it shows that women were always considered inferior and that it was legitim to have them under male control and at their disposal. Besides expressing revenge and patriarchal dominance, this extract with Jorge’s confessions, allows us to replace this allusion to colonialization into a more precise historical context, where women’s inferior condition is directly evolved. Nevertheless, it is important to consider that Celia made it through and even scared her husband and this shows the beginning of power holding.

However, one of the main characters, Lourdes, is a perfect contradiction of those usually submitted represented women of that time, as when Spivak says there was the “tendency historically to prioritize men” (Edwards 100). Lourdes on the contrary would never let anyone tell her what to do, as she acts like an independent woman in a rather feminist way. One of many examples where García gives her a voice, is when she marries Rufino Puente and Lourdes refuses not to work even if it is considered not suitable for her new social status, as women normally only take care of the houses, the children and their husband. She goes against the stereotypical behavior of the women surrounding her as it is depicted when it is written that: “Cuban woman of a certain age and a certain class consider working outside the home to be beneath them. But Lourdes never believed that. (…) Lourdes never accepted the life designed for its woman.” (p.130), referring to the women in the Puente family. She acts like an independent woman who knows what she wants and does everything to achieve her goal. To go a little further, she even pursues equality between men and women by being engaged as “an auxiliary policewoman, the first in her precinct.” (p. 127), an exception for woman. She is looking for equality in holding power and her working shoes reinforce this feeling of a controlling position: “These shoes are power.” (p.127), meaning she feels powerful. Lourdes is a very obstinate and strong character and all that she suffered reinforced this though side. She is also a fighter and may be considered as a rebel even if she clearly stands against them. As illustration, as the soldiers came to her house, she bravely defended her husband by physically protecting him with her body and making them go away: “She jumped of her horse and stood like a shield before her husband. “Get the hell out of here!” she shouted with such ferocity that the soldiers lowered their guns and backed towards their Jeep.” (p.70). By acting this way, she shows that she is not docile as other women may be. Even when they come back to rape her, she “did not close her eyes but looked directly into his.” (p.71), as a sign of resistance instead of submitting herself completely to him. Lourdes is an admirable example of bravery and a powerful woman that contradicts with woman’s submission by this time.

Rebellion, feminism and commitment are characteristical traits in the woman of this family. As we previously saw Lourdes’ temperament, we can also retrace this determination in her mother’s and daughter’s behavior and comments. As Celia del Pino was pregnant for the first time, she had in mind to leave, but “if she had a girl, Celia decided, she would stay.” (p.42).  Because she wanted to prepare her daughter to “read the columns of blood and numbers in men’s eyes, to understand the morphology of survival. Her daughter, too, would outlast the hard flames.” (p.42). By telling this she reveals that she would let nothing harm her daughter the way she has been suffering because of her husband’s actions. No men would ever do her wrong and even if she had to go through some hard times, she would be ready to resist as Celia overcame her psychological destruction.

Moreover, Pilar has this fighter vain too. As an artist, she strongly believes that women are as capable as men to do astonishing work of arts and that it is not normal that their work is not considered as equal. She says: “Even supposedly knowledgeable and sensitive people react to good art by a woman as if it were an anomaly, a product of a freak nature or a direct result of her association with a male painter or mentor.” (p.139-140). She defends women’s circumstances and denounces the cliché that a woman can only exist through a leading man and that she would in this case only be a non-relevant being with no own credit. She declares that she wants herself to “obliterate the cliché” (p.139), that women are less talented than men and can only succeed through a man’s influence. Each of them in their own way manage to have a voice about how they think society should be and mostly about the place women should have in comparison to men. Equality and consideration are the main messages of their speech and this is a whole new element in post-colonial literature. The main narrative voices change and become these of women.

In addition, we also have to consider the fact that the women are not only given a voice through narrative voice, but that their position in History are also being questioned and redefined. Through Pilar, García denounced the fact that History has been very selective and excluded women. As Pilar says: “If it was up to me, I’d record other things.” (p.28) and then enumerates a considerable amount of woman who fought for their rights, such as “the women” in Congo, “prostitutes in Bombay” and her grandmother. She is giving importance to other protagonists of history and challenges white men’s power. Once more, she moves the centered men to the margins and shows what and who should also be reminded. By acting this way, she deconstructs the classical standardized narratives and sheds light on a new kind of “heroes”.

In fact, not only rather white women, but also black people are being giving the power to speak and express themselves, to claim all the things that have been hidden by History. As Edwards says it properly in his chapter about memory, “postcolonial writing often deals with the recollection of traumatic events, sometimes trying to heal the wounds left by colonial rules” (Edwards 132), and this is exactly what Herminia’s character does. In this novel, there is a black woman named Herminia Delgado who allows us through her father’s stories, to learn what really happened in black history in the context of Cuba and which were the forgotten elements. She says that “for many years in Cuba, nobody spoke of the problem between black and whites.” (p.184-185) and this truly reveals the social discrepancies and climate of these times, when segregation and racism where still very present and applied.

Furthermore, Herminia also recovers a part of the collective black community’s memory, by retelling what really happened with black people during war because the elements were selected. It is necessary to know the truth, as Kincaid says when she tells of “the importance of understanding history, particularly a past that is marked by colonization and slavery” and “the importance of depicting racial difference alongside gender distinctions” (Edwards, Understanding Jamaica Kincaid 13), meaning that differences were categorized on different levels.  Herminia reports that her father denounced “what happened to his father and his uncles during the Little War of 1912, so that I would know how our men were hunted down day and night like animals, and finally hung by their genitals (…)” (p.185). The atrocities endured by these black men is here depicted very crudely and it underlines even more this abuse of power they went through. Besides, the use of the “our men” emphasizes the feeling of unity concerning the black people and strengthens even more this separation between black and white. However, the most important point here is that she adds that “the war that killed my grandfather and great-uncles and thousands of other blacks is only a footnote in our history books.” (p.185) and this reveals the inequality in relation to power, because it was mostly the white men who had the power and supposed knowledge to write History and who did not found relevant to mention what they did to other people. As Kincaid understands it: “that act of forgetting has a purpose, for it erases abuse and illegitimate power and negates responsibility.” (p.131), and this is what History really reveals us, that it is only a partial, fragmented history.

Finally, she also has a word to say about male dominance in general, as she utters that: “One thing hasn’t changed: the men are still in charge. Fixing it is going to take a lot longer than twenty years.” (p.185), talking about how politics nowadays tend to say that we are all equal. By saying that, she denounces the fact that women are yet not considered to be alter-egos to men and that the change is going to be way more difficult than it was to reunite black and white people. She embodies the representation of black women willing to take power to tell the truth and redefine archaic stereotypes.

In conclusion, the way Cristina García wrote the story allows us to truly redefine women’s place and importance in this period, by giving them a voice. This new point of view contrast with for instance, the typical remarks mentioned in Edwards’ text, where women are marginalized. In fact, we are used to men centered stories with men’s opinion about everything in general and where women may only have a small place in the margins but that does not count. As Miller says, “woman are neither writers nor readers, and that woman have no played a role in the articulation, dissemination or condemnation of Orientalist discourses.” (Edwards 100) These words resume the cliché we believe in, are tend to follow and contribute to.

Bibliography:

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

—. Understanding Jamaica Kincaid. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2007.

García, Christina. Dreaming in Cuban. New York: Ballantine Books, 1993.

The repercussions of politics on Celia’s family

The unbreakable link between politics and identity in Christina Garcia’s “Dreaming in Cuban”

In Crístina Garcia’s “Dreaming in Cuban”, politics shows to be one of the main themes and leads inexorably to exile and the question of identity and hybridity. The use of figures of speech strengthens these main themes. The drawing of a parallel between form and content, allows us to understand more deeply the meaning that the key concepts of politics, exile and identity bear. The parallel can be more precisely drown in the chosen passage that starts page 6: “Celia grieves for her husband,” until page 7:” scarlets and greens.”. In this passage García reveals the unbreakable link between politics and its consequences such as identity questions through dead metaphor, rhetorical questions, hyperbole, specific vocabulary choices, lexical fields, and allusion in order to point out the repercussions of politics on Celia’s family.

The opening of the passage allows us to dive directly into the political issues faced by Celia’s family, at this time, in Cuba. When it is ambiguously written that: “Celia grieves for her husband” (p.6), it is not meant for his death, “not yet” (p.6) as she says but mostly for his “mixed-up allegiances” (p.6) meaning his honor, bravery and loyalty. Thereby it is meant that even if moral values are important, that they do not seem to be always as positive as they should be, as they bring sorrow to Celia. Jorge worked hard in an American company wanting “to prove to his gringo boss that they were cut from the same cloth.” (p.6). By using this dead metaphor, García introduces the concept of inequality. Indeed, the verb “prove” used here reveals the fact that it is Jorge who has to do things better and work harder to show his equal status to his boss. It is a little “ironical” if we consider the fact that it is Jorge who is the native Cuban that has to surpass himself to “prove” something to a stranger who had more power. Jorge claims that his “gringo” boss and he are equal, introducing thus also discretely the discrepancy in social classes in Cuba in this pre-revolutionary era and the underlying inferiority of Cubans versus the Americans. Moreover, the slang term “gringo” meaning a stranger not natively speaking Spanish and mostly associated to an Anglophone country and its culture and society, is mostly used in a pejorative way to express its original meaning: greens go, implying the American soldiers. The dead metaphor allows us thus to understand better the social climate of the novel.

Politics do not only bring social discrepancies but also the idea of uncertainty. In fact, the use of a third person narrative gives the impression that the character is not completely in control of the situation and that an omniscient external narrator is needed to answer Celia’s rhetorical questions and explain the situation. The allusion to “El Líder” (p.6) as Fidel Castro is a metonymy and he stands for responsible of the happening situation. Celia’s children and grandchildren are “nomads” (p.7) due to the “vagaries “(p.6) of life, as if things were not always under control but were resulting from luck or misfortune, from an uncertain, influenceable destiny. The lexical field of unpredictability is thus increased by the use of words and expressions such as: “uncertain”, “who could have predicted”, “unknown”, “vagaries” and “happenstance” (p.6). Uncertainty steams directly from political context and influences the characters’ lifes.

Moreover, in addition to the idea of uncertainty, there is the introduction of the concept of exile and what it implies. When García writes that “Celia cannot decide which is worse, separation or death. Separation is familiar, too familiar (…)” (p.6) we are confronted to a consequence of unstable politics too: exile. Her family is scattered through the world and she feels alone. The hyperbole “too familiar” amplifies her solitude and the lexical field of loneliness is thus increased. Moreover, Celia asks herself rhetorical questions about the course of her life and how she got to this point and what is interesting here, is that the last word of her questioning is “solitude” (p.6), as if it was a kind of answer to everything. Besides leading to exile, politics also bring separation and identity questions.

Furthermore, in order to deepen the subject of identity, it is relevant to examine the term “nomads” (p.7), that is used to link the theme of identity with exile. Indeed, the choice of the term “nomad”, as a consequence of exile, is representing someone that has no homeland due to the fact of moving constantly (for political reasons or not) and not belonging anywhere. This link allows us to draw a parallel with hybrids, an important term in colonial societies and therefore in this novel. In fact, hybridity depends on social and political contextual factors to which people tend to belong or not. In García’s novel, Pilar stands as representation of it, as she does not feel home in New York, but neither in Cuba, where her only link is her “abuela”. She is torn by her hybridity and as it is described: “Pilar, her first grandchild, writes to her from Brooklyn in a Spanish that is no longer hers. She speaks the hard-edged lexicon of bygone tourists (…)” (p.7), as if Pilar also just was one of them, not belonging in Cuba anymore. This frightens Celia because she seems to realize where Pilar belongs whenever Pilar does not know and will only discover in the very end of the novel. The vocabulary sets the atmosphere and are clues to the following events.

To conclude we can assert that the content and the form of the passage are strongly linked and that they strengthen each other. The use of many figures of speech such as dead metaphor, rhetorical questions, hyperbole, specific vocabulary choices, lexical fields, allusion and ambiguity, allows us to identify more clearly the troubles the characters are going through. The way in which the novel is written, helps the reader to follow the story and understand better the main relevant elements. Politics influences the life of a lot of families by this time, by questioning their identity in this exile situation and this is what is perfectly depicted in this novel.