Author Archives: Myriam J.

“Wrestling ghosts in her dreams” Positive and Negative Hauntings Experienced by Lourdes Puente in Cristina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban

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In Justin D. Edwards’s book on postcolonial literature, he explains that postcolonial writers “invoke spectres and ghosts to represent the devastating effects of colonization and slavery” (Edwards 119). Thus, haunting as a post-colonial literary device is often used to speak about a collective trauma experienced by a nation. In Cristina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban, the members of the del Pino family have been affected by the political climate of Cuba; this country thus serves as a setting for a “collective haunting” (Edwards 121), not only for this family, but for all the population of the country as well. Some members of the del Pino family still live in Cuba while others have left the country. Among the latter, Lourdes Puente, who now lives in New York City, appears as the one who is the most haunted by what she has lived in Cuba and only the presence of her father as a ghost seems to have a calming and uplifting effect on her. Indeed, through the setting of Cuba, her memories and her body, Lourdes is haunted by the ghosts from her past, while her father’s ghost serves as a positive presence in her life; thus showing that Lourdes’s haunting is experienced in a personal level.

Lourdes is haunted by the memories of her past linked to the physical setting of Cuba. This country represents all the bad memories she has left behind when leaving for the United States of America. When she learns that her father, Jorge del Pino, has just passed away, “Lourdes imagines [him] … heading south, returning home to their beach, which is mined with sad memories” (24). In this dead metaphor, the use of the adjective “mined” creates the idea that the negative souvenirs from Lourdes’s past are buried in the ground, that they belong to the setting of the house near the beach in Santa Teresa del Mar. This adjective is also related to mines which explode if we walk upon them. Here, the fact that memories are associated to mines reinforces the idea that it is difficult for Lourdes to remember them; that they will explode if she gets too close to them. Thus, we can see that the woman has to hide away to protect herself from the painful memories of her past. In an article focusing on Lourdes’s trauma, Inger Petersson explains that “Lourdes is a woman with repressed experiences and memories” (Petersson 49). Indeed, she has lived things in Cuba that are too painful for her to remember or face directly: the lack of maternal love from her mother, the premature death of her second child and her rape by a soldier. Two of these traumatic experiences happened in the villa where Rufino Puente and Lourdes used to live when they were still in Cuba. When she finally returns to Cuba with her daughter Pilar, she goes back, alone, to this villa which is haunted with memories from her past: “she lost her second child in this place. A baby boy. A boy she would have named Jorge, after her father. A boy, Lourdes recalls, a boy in a soft clot of blood at her feet” (227). The fact that she has lost her child is associated to the “clot of blood” at her feet, which is the embryo. Furthermore, the villa in itself seems haunted by Lourdes’s traumatic experience of a loss of a child. Now that she has been able to face the ghosts of her past, she is afraid that her baby’s death is going to be “absorded quietly by the earth” (227), as if the setting of this Cuban villa had the power to retain or erase these painful events in Lourdes’s life. Therefore, Cuba serves as a setting which contains all the ghosts and painful experiences of Lourdes’s past.

Lourdes, however, does not need to be physically present in Cuba in order to be haunted by the ghosts from her past. Indeed, her body bears the physical marks and trauma that she has experienced. The loss of her child has left an emotional and psychological hole inside her body. Pilar explains that, when sleeping, “[her mother] tossed and turned all night, as if she were wrestling ghosts in her dreams. Sometimes she’d wake up crying, clutching her stomach and moaning from deep inside a place [she] couldn’t understand” (221). We can see that, while she sleeps, Lourdes is tormented by the ghosts from her past. These ghosts are present inside her body, in a place so deep and so hidden that Pilar cannot grasp its significance. This place is what Lourdes’s lost child has left: “Lourdes felt the clot disloge and liquefy beneath her breasts, float through her belly, and slide down her thighs. There was a pool of dark blood at her feet” (70). With this description of the loss of Lourdes’s child, we can see that something physical is going out of her body. She has not just lost her child, but also a part of her; a part of her that would always be present in the villa where she used to live with Rufino. Furthermore, Lourdes is also haunted by the ghost of her child when she is in New York. While sitting near a pool inside a museum with her daughter, “Lourdes is mesmerized by the greenish water, by the sad, sputtering fountain, and a wound inside her reopens” (174). The woman bears in her body the scar of the loss of her child. Because this wound is reopened, her child comes back to haunt her: “Lourdes sees the face of her unborn child, pale and blank as an egg, buoyed by the fountain waters” (174). The presence of water reminds Lourdes of the loss of her child. It is also associated with the color white, with words such as “pale”, “blank” and “egg”. Thus, here, death is paradoxically associated to the color white and to water, which are also linked to giving birth to a child. While the color white often symbolizes purity, here it is associated to death. Just after this traumatic event, Lourdes was raped by a soldier from the revolutionary government: “when he finished, the soldier lifted the knife and began to scratch at Lourdes’s belly with great concentration. A primeval scraping. Crimson hieroglyphics” (72). Lourdes’s body bears a physical trace of her rape: a scar on her belly. However, what the soldier carved is “illegible” (72), as if the reality of this act was too painful to be put into words. Both the loss of Lourdes’s child and her rape are associated with the color red. This color represents here something raw, primitive and violent. It is both associated with Lourdes’s blood and the crimson hieroglyphics on her body. Thus, the traumatic memories of her past in Cuba are present physically on her body, leaving eternal scars and haunting the woman.

While the setting of Cuba and Lourdes body are negatively haunted, the presence of Jorge’s ghost in Lourdes’s life in New York City is perceived as positive and uplifting for the woman. Indeed, “Lourdes is herself only with her father. Even after his death, they understand each other perfectly, as they always have” (31). Jorge del Pino’s presence is stronger when he is a ghost than when he was alive. The time before his death is just alluded to. On the other hand, when he is a ghost, his conversations with Lourdes and his words are transcribed in direct speech: “‘Mi hija, have you forgotten me?’ Jorge del Pino chides gently” (73). In addition to having direct transcription of what he says, we also have indications on his attitude towards his daughter and on the way he speaks to her: he scolds her in a tender manner. Inger Pettersson analyzes the relationship between Lourdes and Jorge with the concept of “borderless communication” (Pettersson 50). Indeed, their discussions transcend life and death. Developing on the idea that their relationship is positive for Lourdes, Pettersson argues that “death, or rather, the company of her dead father, will become Lourdes’s safe space” (Pettersson 50). While the death of her second child is associated to Lourdes’s sad memories from her past in Cuba, the ghost of her father embodies a positive presence in her life in New York City. Jorge helps Lourdes face the grudges she still feels for her mother and he tries to explain to her that he has also played a part in making Celia turning away from her daughter (194-197). Edwards, while referring to Toni Morrison’s treatment of haunting in her novel Beloved, explains that,

The literary use of haunting offers the possibility of representing ‘unspeakable things unspoken’. That is, the spectral can, in some cases, capture that which is beyond language, particularly experiences that are traumatic, psychologically wounding, emotionally scarring or physically harsh. (Edwards 119)

Indeed, the presence of a ghost can sometimes represent an unfinished business or something that the person, who is being haunted, has hidden away because she or he was too afraid to confront it. When Jorge explains to his daughter that she must go back to Cuba, Lourdes tells her father that he does not understand. She “cries and searches the breeze above her. She smells the brilliantined hair, feels the scraping blade, the web of scars it left on her stomach” (196). Indeed, Jorge confronts her daughter with memories of her past and, while being a positive presence in her life, he is also a constant reminder that Lourdes has not faced the traumatic experiences that she has lived in Cuba. When her father mentions Cuba, the ghost of the soldier who raped her reappears in her mind as a scent. Furthermore, she can feel again the pain that the scar she bears has left on her belly. Indeed, the presence of Jorge as a ghost in Lourdes’s life is positive but also incarnates a lucid reminder that Lourdes must face the ghosts from her past that still haunt her physically and psychologically.

Going back to this notion of “collective haunting” developed by Edwards, the characters of Dreaming in Cuban, as well as the Cuban country as a whole, are haunted by the political trauma that has marked Cuba history. Edwards explains that “in postcolonial writing […] the body politic is sometimes represented as being haunted by history” (Edwards 121). In the novel, the allusions to political figures like Batista (162), the omnipresence of Fidel Castro under the nickname “El Líder” and the allusions to events of Cuban history such as the Bay of Pigs invasion (3,25) reinforce the fact that all members of the del Pino family are affected by this Cuban history. However, Lourdes appears as the character who is the most haunted by the ghosts of her past. She has been mentally and physically marked by her traumatic experiences in Cuba. This country thus serves as a setting where ghosts and memories are still vivid and present. Lourdes’s body is also marked by the loss of her child and by her rape. However, by leaving Cuba, Lourdes did not choose to face the ghosts of her past. Thus, when Jorge died, he came back as a ghost to remind his daughter that she must face these sad memories. It is interesting to notice that the woman would have named her second child Jorge; just like her own father (227). Thus, the two ghosts are strongly associated in Lourdes’s life; however, they both play different roles in her life. While the existence of her child as a ghost is painful, her father’s presence as a ghost is calming and positive. Jorge also embodies Lourdes’s past in Cuba and the fact that she will inevitably have to go back there in order to deal with her troubled past.

Works cited:

Edwards, Justin D. “Haunting.” Postcolonial literature. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. 118- 128.

Pettersson, Inger. “Telling it to the Dead: Bordeless Communication and Scars of Trauma in Cristina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban.” Journal of Literary Studies. University of South Africa, 2013. 18 November 2016. <http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02564718.2013.777143>

“Hey, we’re here too and what we think matters!” The construction of Pilar Puente’s subversive identity in Cristina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban

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The character of Pilar Puente, in Cristina Garcia’s novel Dreaming in Cuban, grows up as a teenager in a family torn apart physically, geographically and ideologically. As a member of the del Pino family living in the United States of America, Pilar is more and more influenced by the underground culture of the New York scene of the 1970s. In a passage on page 135 – from “I just love the way…” to “…with my mother” – the written transcription of Pilar’s spontaneous oral expression, the recurrence of the notion of violence, and allusions to notable figures of the punk movement reflect Pilar’s artistic, subversive and multiple identity, thus emphasizing that it is through this rebellious attitude that she is crafting her own identity.

The oral devices used by Pilar mirror the spontaneity of her flow of speech as well as her attitude as a teenager. She begins by explaining that “[she] just [loves] the way Lou Reed’s concerts feel” (135), Lou Reed being an American musician and an important figure of the underground music scene of the 1960s and 1970s in New York. The use of verbs of emotion such as “love” and “feel” reflects Pilar’s sensitive personality and how she perceives punk music. For her, music is apprehended through the medium of emotion. With the first-person narration and the internal focalization on Pilar’s thoughts, channeled by her stream of consciousness, we have direct access to the teenager’s point of view. Words such as “just” (135) and “it’s like” (135) are devices used in oral speech and they emphasize that it is indeed Pilar who talks and shares her thoughts. They also reflect Pilar’s use of language as a teenager. She uses short and direct phrases to express herself, such as “Not me” (135) and “If I don’t like someone, I show it.” (135). The lack of a complete sentence and the use of contractions reinforce this transcription of oral expression. The presence of direct discourse in sentences quoted by Pilar, such as “Hey, we’re here too and what we think matters!” (135), again strengthens this presence of orality. Thus, the way this passage is written is a direct transcription of Pilar’s thoughts and emotions.

The subversive directness of Pilar’s oral expression is emphasized by the recurrent presence of the notion of violence. Words such as “energy”, “violence”, “assault”, “confront”, “fuck you”, “rude” and the alliteration “grinding guitars” (135) reflect both the energy created by figures of the punk movement mentioned by Pilar, such as Lou Reed, Iggy Pop and the Ramones, and Pilar’s attitude as an artist. She uses a metaphor of a physical attack to describe their presence as “an artistic form of assault” (135). Here, the notions of violence and art are closely connected. Pilar’s artistic identity is clearly influenced by the subversive behavior of those singers. She explains that “[she tries] to translate what [she hears] into colors and volumes and lines that confront people” (135). By acknowledging the influence of punk music on her art, Pilar presents herself as belonging to this community of anticonformists. The fact that Pilar does not conform herself to the established values of society is reflected in the people Lou Reed sings about: “drug addicts, transvestites, the down-and-out” (135). Pilar identifies herself with Lou Reed because he sings about a kind of people who challenge the morality and values of the American society. Thus, the presence of violence and subversion in this passage mirrors the anticonformist attitude of punk singers and their influence on Pilar’s identity.

Pilar also characterizes her identity as being multiple by associating herself with Lou Reed and his “twenty-five personalities” (135). While speaking about the artist’s “alter egos” (135), Pilar explains that “[she feels] like a new [Pilar] sprouts and dies every day” (135). By using a metaphor of rebirth, the teenager acknowledges that she posseses more than one self. Furthermore, by making a parallel between her manifold identity and Lou Reed’s, she demonstrates that they belong to the same anticonformist community. In a passage preceding the one I am concerned with, Pilar explains that “Lou Reed says he has enough attitude to kill every person in New Jersey” (134). There is again a recurrence of the notion of violence with the words “hostile” and “kill”. This violent attitude is reflected through Pilar’s behavior as a teenager and through her work as an artist. By having “enough attitude” (134) to be “rude” (135), she differenciates herself from her boyfriend, whom she describes as being a “traditionalist” (135), thus someone who conforms to the established values of society. Indeed, Pilar chooses to present herself as being someone with an artistically violent, rebellious, and multiple identity.

The notion of belonging to a community is a recurrent theme in Cristina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban. Whether it is by being devoted to the Cuban Revolution (Celia), by organizing a party to celebrate the Fourth of July in the United States of America (Lourdes), or by associating herself with the punk movement (Pilar), the actions of the members of the del Pino family are determined by this search of belonging. While clearly identifying herself with a part of American underground culture, and thus detaching herself from her Cuban origins, Pilar also refuses to accept the American patriotism of her mother. Her identity as a teenager and artist is thus defined as subversive. It is through her direct oral expression as well as the recurrence of words related to violence that Pilar’s identity is created. The allusions to notable figures of the punk movement of the New York scene in the 1970s serve as a reflection on the search of identity of young people during that time. As well as giving a sense of belonging to teenagers, this underground scene also enabled them to stand against the values of the older generations and create their own. Therefore, although focusing mainly on Cuba, Cristina Garcia’s novel also deals with the American perspective of the life in the 1970s and how living in an American society has an impact on Pilar’s construction of her identity.