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.

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 occult is a central theme in Cristina García’s novel, “Dreaming in Cuban”. For instance, at the very beginning of the story, Jorge del Pino’s ghost appears to say goodbye to his wife, Celia, then frequently visits his daughter Lourdes. In addition, Felicia’s passion for the occult is clear as she devotes herself entirely to Santería, and even Pilar turns to the mystical cult when in doubt. As Justin Edwards points out, haunting is a recurrent trope in postcolonial literature, where “narratives deal with history in the forms of phantoms, revenants and ghosts that return from the past to haunt the present” (Edwards, 124). However, in “Dreaming in Cuban”, by using Jorge’s ghost and numerous references to the Santería cult, García gives her characters a means of dealing with and recovering from a painful past.

Felicia’s character is the most strikingly linked to the occult. Amanda Easton argues that “emotional and physical traumas […] compel Felicia to seek out a curative relief, a means of release” and that “Santeria proves to be that source of holistic healing” (Easton, 8). Truly, we can agree that Felicia appears as a mentally troubled character, but seems completely at peace with herself, or “holistically healed” shortly before her death. Although her fascination for this religion is present throughout the novel, Felicia’s troubled mind finally finds solace when she bestows herself fully to Santeria, as Herminia explains on page 186:

At night, Felicia attended our ceremonies. She didn’t miss a single one. For her, they were a kind of poetry that connected her to larger worlds, worlds alive and infinite. Our rituals healed her, made her believe again. My father used to say that there are forces in the universe that can transform our lives if only we’d surrender ourselves. Felicia surrendered, and found her fulfilment (García, 186).

In this extract, the form of the text conveys the idea of yielding to supernatural entities, and the resulting plenitude. Indeed, we may notice that Felicia is mostly in a passive mode, as she allows the paranormal to “connect her to larger worlds” (186), “heal her” (186) and “make her believe again” (186), thereby perfectly illustrating the idea of surrendering. Additionally, the fact that the “worlds” (186) are described with lively and hyperbolic “infinite” (186) attributes supposes a superior force, thus giving the superhuman dimension to the text. As a result, Felicia’s experienced fulfilment can be literally translated into a plenitude induced by letting herself become “filled” with these spirits’ energies. We can therefore agree with Easton’s claim, and affirm that Felicia finds her inner peace and healing from her physical and mental sufferings by surrendering to the mysteries of Santería.

Although she does not share Felicia’s fervent beliefs, the hybrid character of Pilar also happens to turn to Santería, in search for answers she is unable to find anywhere else. Easton once again asserts that “Pilar, like Felicia, seeks out Santeria as a means of healing and an alternative system of negotiating the world around her” (Easton, 5). This statement can be illustrated as Pilar returns from the botánica shop, and heads the old man’s counsel, by bathing in an herbal mix for nine nights. As she prepares herself to bathe in the last paragraph of page 202, Pilar perceives the world in a very confusing way: “In the library, nothing makes sense. The fluorescent lights transmit conversations from passing cars on Broadway” (García, 202). In this last sentence, there is an impossible connection between light and sound, as conversations seem conveyed by light. This paradox only reflects the state of confusion in which Pilar finds herself, as it is followed by several short phrases: “Someone’s ordering a bucket of chicken wings on 103^rd Street. The chairman of the linguistics department is fucking a graduate student named Betsy. Gandhi was a carnivore […] Maybe this is the truth” (García, 202). These sentences hardly have any link with one another, and reflect the noises and conversations Pilar hears in the library around her. By compressing so much arbitrary information in several short sentences, with very little to no transition between the different elements, García gives the text an overloaded feeling, thus translating Pilar’s own uncertainty and confusion. Further, as Pilar enters her bath, her senses are again stimulated, however contrasting with the sensual overload of the first paragraph, in a more orderly fashion, as each perception comes one at a time, in a continuity: she sees the “clear green” (203) of the bath, smells its “sharp scent” (203), and feels “cold dry ice, then a soporific heat” (203). Finally, the solution is presented with an unshakable clarity: “On the ninth day of my baths, I call my mother and tell her we’re going to Cuba” (203). Hence, we can conclude from this passage that Santería appeals to Pilar as a solution resonant of clarity, or what Easton calls “an alternative system of negotiating the world” (Easton, 5), in response to uncertainties of her surroundings she is otherwise unable to unveil.

Finally, the most present haunting figure of the novel is Jorge’s ghost. Edwards shows different uses of haunting in postcolonial literature, among which he suggests its representing of “the wounds of the past and the healing of the future” (Edwards, 120). Indeed, through his apparitions to Lourdes, Jorge seems to want to repair the wounds he has left his family. This is made clear in Lourdes’ last encounter with her father’s phantom. Before leaving for good, he tells his daughter secrets about his early life with Celia, before admonishing Lourdes to return to Cuba. Jorge for instance mentions how he tried to control his wife, then his daughter: “I tried to kill her, Lourdes. I wanted to kill her […] I wanted to break her, may God forgive me.[…] I told the doctors to make her forget […] I took you from her while you were still a part of her. I wanted to own you for myself” (García, 196). In his speech, Jorge seldom mentions Celia’s actions, he rather speaks in the first person, giving his monologue a tone of confession. However, this speach is not only meant for Jorge to leave with a clean conscience, his purpose in telling his daughter about the past is rather to heal her and his family of the pain he has caused them. We feel the soothing intention in his words as he tells Lourdes: “Your mother loved you” (196), as Lourdes has never felt motherly love from Celia. Finally, in a similar way to Pilar’s bath ritual, Jorge provides the clear instruction: “Please return and tell your mother everything, tell her I’m sorry” (197). Consequently, we can conclude from this passage that Jorge returns to his daughter in an attempt to make amends for the past, and is yet another supernatural figure García uses to guide her characters.

As a conclusion, we can therefore assert that in “Dreaming in Cuban”, García displays supernatural and haunting figures as a means of healing for her characters’ different forms of suffering. Felicia turns to Santería to find inner peace, as for Pilar, the mystic practice helps her make sense of a world she is at times unable to read and find her hybrid identity. Finally, Jorge’s ghost transmits a desire of exposing the past in hopes of helping his beloved daughter and family to recover from it.

Works cited:

Easton, Amanda. “A Space for Resistance and Possibility: Confronting Borders through

Narrative and Santería in Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban”. Label me Latina/o, Fall 2013 Volume 3.

Edwards, Justin. “Haunting”. Postcolonial Literature. Tredell Nicolas.  London: Macmillan, 2008. 117-128.

García, Cristina. Dreaming in Cuban : a novel. New York: Ballantine Books, 1993.

The novel Dreaming in Cuban written by Cristina García, often addresses the theme of memory, which can be either personal or cultural, and which brings on various other sub-themes such as identity, legacy, and distortion. It is through the analysis of these sub-themes and with the help of the author’s interview as well as Justin D. Edwards’s chapter on Posctolonial Literature, that the reader will be able to determine how important memory is to the construction of the main characters’s truth.

In the book’s reader’s guide, Cristina García explains how memory comes as a “need [for her characters] to reinvent themselves and invest themselves in narratives of their own devising” (García 255). Pilar does feel this need as she devotes herself to “[record] everything down” (García 7) in a diary, making sure that no details of her life are left behind. In fact, she later adds that she made sure to “remember[s] everything that’s happened to [her] since [she] was a baby, even word-for-word conversations” (García 26). According to the Cambridge Dictionary, the verb “to remember” means “to keep a piece of information in your memory,”¹ however in this quote Pilar affirms that she has a memory of every single event that has happened in her life. Indeed, this precision can be seen in her use of the pronoun “everything,” the use of the adverb “even” and the expression “word-to-word.” Although this could be read as being hyperbolic, it shows how important memory is for her, especially since she does not allow any detail of her life to be forgotten. To get a true sense of her identity however, Pilar needs to understand where she comes from and her memory alone is not enough as she says that “[e]veryday Cuba fades a little more inside [her]” (García 138). Since she lived most of her life in the United States and did not really experience the Revolution, Pilar has a lack of knowledge regarding her native country and its past. Indeed, she “do[es] not have [any] personal memories of the hardships, exploitation, cruelty and torture” her ancestors have endured, thus she needs stories which, as Edwards writes in his chapter, “fill in [the] past-narratives [to] help [one] remember where [one] come[s] from” (Edwards 129). These stories can come from people she has talked to as well as books she has read.

When trying to fill the gaps between her own memory and the history of Cuba, Pilar is soon faced with disappointment after she finds out no one has covered subjects she would have been interested in, like the hailstorm in Congo (García 28) for example. History books are thus incomplete, as she realizes that “there’s only my imagination where our history should be” (García 138). The use of the verb “shall” expresses that her expectations have not been met and the adjective “only” emphasizes the fact that imagination is not enough since it is not reliable. In this respect, the author of the novel states in the reader’s guide, that memory is “a product of both necessity and imagination” (García 255). Pilar has the urge to know her cuban history and believes it is the duty of her ancestors to share their history and not hers to create one. At one point, Pilar asks the rhetorical question: “Who chooses what we should know or what’s important?” (García 28) which she later replies to by stating that it is “the politicians and the generals” who she “resent[s] the hell out [and] who force events on [them] [to] rupture [their] lives, that dictate the memories [they]’ll have when [they]’re old.” (García 137-8). The use of the words “resent” and “hell” show how outraged Pilar is, while the use of the verbs “to force” and “to dictate” highlights how powerless she feels before the politicians and the generals. She also feels disgusted “that men who had nothing to do with [her] had the power to rupture [her] dreams” (García 199-200). In parallel, Herminia also feels angry and powerless in front of those who get to decide what is important, as her black ancestors are “only [considered] a footnote in [these] historybooks” (García 185) which is merely nothing. In this regard, Edwards states that “colonial narratives often try to influence collective memory and stories of the past by white-washing the history of conflict, violence and trauma” (Edwards 130). With the term “white-washing,” Edwards means that history is often told by the colonizers’s point of view, while the colonized’s perspective is not taken into account or deliberately forgotten. In Edwards’s chapter, Kincaid claims that “[w]ithout responsibility, there can be no apology, reparation or forgiveness” (Edwards 131). Since the colonizers do not take responsibility for their past actions against african and caribbean people, it is impossible for either Pilar or Herminia to forgive them. Having a collective memory is thus very important since it “plays a significant part in the symbolic relationship between the mother country (the imperial power) and the infantilized nation (the colony)” (Edwards 131). This symbolic relationship is what both Herminia and Pilar strive for, as it would help them find a proper balance in their hybridity, as well as finally find their own true identity. Yet, the informations they get in these history books are only one sided, which means that one part of their identity is totally disregarded. This is the reason why Herminia also questions how she can “trust anything [she] read[s]?” (García 185) which she then answers to herself by stating that she can “[only] trust what [she] see[s]” and “what [she] know[s]” and “nothing more” (García 185). Because of the biased perspective and selective memory of historical books, Herminia feels as if she has no choice left but to trust her own memory exclusively.

According to Celia, “memory cannot be confined” (García 47), which she explains with the example of selling cameras. She believes, in fact, that it is an “act of cruelty” and “atrocity” to sell those as they “imprison emotions on squares of glossy paper” (García 48). She is personally all about writing down her own memories since the act of writing is a “solitary act” (Edwards 43) that lacks the immediacy of photography. Indeed, writing allows her to explore her emotions with all the time she needs as well as to rearrange her memories the way she likes, which is not possible with photography. The last time Celia writes to Gustavo is actually the day Pilar is born. Indeed, she tells Gustavo: “I will no longer write to you, mi amor. [Pilar] will remember everything” (García 245). The fact that Celia no longer needs to write to her Spanish lover is because she finally has someone she can bequeath her memories to. Indeed, Gustavo only represents an idea, since she does not actually send her letters to him. The author of the novel herself, explains that “the letters provide a window into her inner life and yearnings” (García 252). Furthermore, Celia states that “only [her] granddaughter can save [her]” and “guard [her] knowledge like the first fire” (García 222). For Celia, being saved means that someone is going to protect what she values the most, which is her “knowledge.” Cristina García declares in her interview that each of her characters “needs to be a heroine, to believe [they] [are] doing the right thing, choosing the only path to a kind of personal redemption,” she also adds that “[t]hey need their memories in this sense to survive” (García 255). The fact that Celia shares a “box of letters she wrote to her onetime lover in Spain” (García 235) with her granddaughter, is actually the only path for her to attain “a personal redemption” (García 255). By sharing these letters, Celia actually “offers a sense of collective identity” to her granddaughter, which is very important as Edwards himself states that it “links the past with the present” (Edwards 129): the past being Abuela Celia and the present being Pilar. The latter, starts to feel differently after receiving her grandmother’s legacy. Indeed, shortly after she “feel[s] [her] grandmother’s life passing to [her],” she feels “a steady electricity, humming and true” (García 222). She also starts to have dreams in Spanish, which she insists “has never happened before” (García 235). These changes happen because she finally knows where she belongs. Indeed, the lack of information she had about her cuban ancestors is now filled in with her grandmother’s legacy of her memory.

One may argue, indeed, that Celia’s letters are based on her own perception of reality. In this respect, Edwards states that “memory is not always perfect; it can distort or change information” (Edwards 41). Felicia also believes that, as she tells her son Ivanito that: “[i]magination, like memory, can transform lies to truths” (García 88). Indeed, memory is very powerful in the way that it can change someone’s opinion on a memory or on the opposite, make someone keep their opinion. Both cases can be seen many times in the book, as a shared event is told various times by different characters. This causes each character to have their own sense of what is true and what is not. For example, Lourdes and her parents each believe the veracity of their own memory of a shared event. Lourdes has always believed that her mother had intentionally abandoned her but it appears that she was missing an essential piece of the puzzle. Indeed, her father later confessed to her that he was the one that “tried to kill” and “to break” her mother until the point where “[s]he held [Lourdes] out to [him] by one leg and told [him] she would not remember her [daughter’s] name” (García 195). Although Jorge shared his truth, Lourdes decides not to believe it and holds on to her own truth:
She knows that she cannot keep her promise to her father, to tell her mother that he was sorry, sorry for sending her away, sorry for her silent hands. The words refuse to form in her mouth. Instead, like a brutal punishment, Lourdes feels the grip of her mother’s hand, hears her mother’s words before she left for the asylum: “I will not remember her name.” (García 238)
In a way, Lourdes both punishes herself as well as her parents by deciding to keep her own truth and neglecting theirs. A shared memory can thus be extremely distorted, since one person can perceive a truth as a lie, and vice-versa.

In conclusion, it is important to note how memory is closely connected to each character’s sense of self. While some characters are eager to receive another person’s memory in order to complete the missing bits of theirs, others prefer to stay completely in their own truth and avoid other’s perspectives.

Bibliography:

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

• García, Cristina. Dreaming in Cuban : a novel. New York: Ballantine Books, 1993.

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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

The irony of language used by the character of Pilar in Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia

Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia is a novel where the reader can approach the characters and make his own opinion about them by their language, their feelings, their thoughts, their background, etc. Furthermore, the narration gives to the reader the impression of being close to the characters. Some of them narrate the story in the first person and others on the third. Obviously, the first person brings the orality to the novel and the third person makes it more “formal” or more poetic. In this work, we will focus on Pilar Puente who is a round character that uses the first person. The passage at page 62 beginning with “I get discouraged […]” until “[…] here to complain” page 63 shows the relationship Pilar has with her mother (Lourdes Puente). The use of irony is recurrent and this has an impact on the text, on the meaning and on the reader. The effects of irony also have an impact on the nature of the relationship of Pilar and her mother.

Based on the feelings of Pilar, she seems being tired of what she is doing; she asks herself “Like what am I? A fugitive from my mother’s Bakery?” (62), the direct speech and the rhetorical questions she uses, express what she feels and reveal her tiredness towards the events happening. These rhetorical questions also reveal her need of identity; all along the passage, her identity is questioned. She went to Miami to ease her escape to Cuba but once arrived, she seems to have forgotten her objective: “I get discouraged. I look in through the rest of the windows without even trying to hide” (62), again her tiredness can be felt by her discourse and it avoids her capacity of staying focused on her purpose. Even though, the personification “the clouds speed through the darkening skies, probably headed to Cuba” (62) divulges that she watches the clouds and thinks about Cuba. There is a kind of paradox between her search of identity and her sudden questioning. Later in the passage, she also thinks her mother cannot change her “She tells me […] is more frustration at what she can’t change. I guess I’m of those things she can’t change” (63). The repetition of “she can’t change” reveal the certitude of Pilar of being a problem for her mother, so it can be interpreted again as the identity Pilar is searching.

Despite her search of identity, similes are a characteristic of Pilar’s language, “she can look like the dogs guarding hell, except she sounds more like a terrier or a Chihuahua” (63). In this sentence, Pilar talks about her mother and imagines her mother’s face when she will discover that her daughter ran away. The first part of the sentence, “she can look like the dogs guarding hell”, in many religious beliefs, the dogs guarding hell are the symbol of ferocity and animosity, it emphasize on the fact that her mother just “look” like them but it does not make her a bad person. Actually, the comparison: “she sounds more like a Terrier or a Chihuahua” reveals that Lourdes is not as mean as the reader can think because these two breeds of dogs are known to be only bad-tempered dogs and no aggressive. The opposition of those dogs is manifest and Pilar uses this simile ironically. By applying the irony, the narrator portrays Lourdes’ personality. Moreover, the metaphor “In her hands, bedroom slippers are lethal weapons” (63) puts the severity of Lourdes forward and the fact that she “can get pretty violent” (63) reveals that Lourdes even though has a certain authority on Pilar, this power is developed later by turning back to the past.

The authority of Lourdes is accentuated with a contrast between the past and the present; Pilar describes how her mother was respected in Cuba and how she is not in the United States: “Back in Cuba, everybody used to treat Mom with respect. Their backs would straighten and they’d put attentive faces like their lives depended on the bolt of fabric she chose” (63). “Back in Cuba”, is the reference to the past and the hyperbole of “like their lives depended on the bolt of fabric she chose” is used to show how much respect people had for Lourdes in Cuba. The sentence intensifies the link between the word “lives” and the second part of the sentence, “the bolt of fabric she chose” and these statements have their own grade of significance. Actually, “lives” is more important than the second part of the sentence and the hyperbole shows the reader the power Lourdes had in Cuba. Quite the opposite in the United States where: “These days, all the neighborhood merchants hate her” (63). We are back to the present by “these days” and then this ironic metaphor made in direct speech: “Where are the knobs, kid?” they ask me when her volume goes up” (63), is linked with her bad temper and the similes of the “Chihuahua” and the “Terrier”. The irony of Pilar’s language is also visible when she makes a joke about her mother and the fact she is always complaining about the items she buys. “One day, she’ll walk into a department store […] Congratulations, Mrs. Puente! This marks the thousandth time you’ve come in here to complain!” (63). The irony of language that Pilar uses, creates humour. In other words, it can be interpreted as she is mocking her mother. Again, the fact this joke is told in the first person brings orality to the text and makes the reader closer to it. Pilar is telling that because she reports the fact her mother is hateful when she wants to complain or even when she tries to straighten out Pilar.

In conclusion, the irony Pilar uses, is to bring a certain orality to the text; every word of the first person has a humoristic impact on the reader. He understands quickly that Pilar is very serious about what she thinks. That also makes the meaning and the form connected to each other, and that the novel Dreaming in Cuban is written without any artifices.

In Dreaming in Cuban, the reader is confronted with very different characters, described in various perspectives. Compared to Celia or Pilar’s complex character developments, Lourdes doesn’t appear as a round character at the first sight. This is emphasized as she often states down to earth, black and white judgments – especially facing her daughter, through her own point of view. However, Lourdes’s relationship to her own body gives the reader another comprehension of her character. It helps the character development as much as the narrative during Lourdes’s passages. Her body undergoes extreme experiences through the novel that highlight Lourdes’ willpower, need for control and freedom. Tree main moments helps this understanding: Lourde’s rape, her instable libido and her eating disorder.

Lourdes’s rape by a revolutionary soldier in Cuba (Garcia 71) plays a big role in the narrative process concerning her character. This episode can be seen as the fight between Lourdes and the patriarchal state, which is personified in the soldier. When he notes that “the woman of the house is a fighter” (71), the soldier has to show power over her. He represents the social and cultural power of the revolution. The same way McClintock describes imperialism penetrating a country (Edward 96), this soldier politically overpowers Lourdes by raping her. This act is kept secret by Lourdes and remembered for the first time years later in the narration, when Jorge tells his daughter “[he knows] about the soldier” (Garcia 196). But mentioning it is almost pointless, because remembering the rape might be part of Lourdes’ everyday behavior. This way the memory of it acts upon Lourdes’ way of thinking and reacting. Some of her reactions are predictable along the novel, such as her worries about Pilar’s sexuality. One can read the rape passage as a defining moment helping the narrative and character development of Lourdes.

The relationship between Rufino and Lourdes shows a one-way domination. It is not only underlined by their professional life, but also by a physical domination of Lourdes over her husband. This domination is linked to Lourdes eating disorder: during the first chapters, she is rather acted upon by her desires than mastering them. This is even poetically specified, as “she submitted to them like a somnambulist to a dream” (Garcia 21). This element adds complexity to Lourdes’ relationship to her body because of its ambivalence. Indeed, she is subjecting herself to her libido, which is subjecting Rufino himself – “[begging] his wife for a few nights’ peace” (21). Lourdes therefore reveals a more savage aspect of her character, that she does not control, nor wish to control. This point contrasts strongly with her way to run the family.

Considering the first argument about the rape’s memory, one can also read Lourdes libido as a way to “reconstruct her gendered identity” (Furman 33), alongside the American lifestyle she embraced. Lourdes uses a form of authority she has experienced through her rape, in a playful way with Rufino: she rings a bell to call him to the bedroom (Garcia 21). Furthermore, she exhausts her husband so much it is almost a form of harassment. This behavior might be a way to erase the rape’s memory, as it is suggested in “Lourdes (was) reaching through Rufino for something he could not give her, she wasn’t sure what” (21). This previous quote subtly opens another dimension to Lourdes character and how it is going to be narrated. Later on, she completely stops to have sex with her husband, in a purification ideal related to her extreme diet. Her abstinence also depicts the search for a new identity, and expresses Lourdes’ struggle via her body. What she can not tell to the reader, she shows it through a certain fleshly language.

Moreover, this body language is best illustrated through Lourdes’ compulsive eating disorders. As mentioned, these disorders are linked to her sexual appetite, but not only. Lourdes’ ups and downs develop her emotional state as well as her search for identity. When she decides to stop eating for months, she demonstrates her characteristic willpower: “willpower goes a long way getting toward what you want” (Garcia 172). In opposition with her rape, Lourdes shows she has finally power over her own body. It is no longer acted upon. This way she erases the painful memory and gets free by starving herself. One can regard this as a way for Lourdes to “write the self”, such as observed in Minh-ha’s proposal (Edward 105). Using another language enables Lourdes to get over what enslaves her. It is another way to show authority without using traditional means of power. By subverting the patriarchal and cultural language she is submitted to, Lourdes access to a form of liberation (Edward 105).

This liberation is concluded by the greatest contradiction that makes Lourdes’ body speaks. Finally freed from a memory she is fighting against, Lourdes eats like a glutton at Thanksgiving Day. But her relationship to her body underlines way more than a binary power structure. Rather than considering it as a fight, one can understand it as Lourdes’s own language through the novel. The narration is illustrated by the passive/active role of the body itself. And when this body goes through black and white moment (such as Lourdes’ judgments at some point), it is at first an expression tool. And at very precise moments, Lourdes’s body “[remembers] what her mind has forgotten” (Garcia 224). It is no wonder why she is the best dancer of the family.

Bibliography:

EDWARDS, Justin D. Postcolonial literature. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. p. 96-106.

FURMAN, Rachael. Communicating Control: Performing and Voicing Authorial Power through the Female Body in Dreaming in Cuban. Young Scholars In Writing, 2015, vol. 8, p. 30-39.

GARCIA, Cristina. Dreaming in Cuban. Ballantine books, 2011.

A Question of Power

Close reading of the gender differences within Christina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban

In Christina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban, the narration is done through three generations of Cuban women. However, a male character named Jorge Del Pino has a strong influence on these women throughout his words and he is, in addition, the man of the family. His voice is a symbolized as a weapon in the image of the men in history books and the Revolutionary movement within Cuba. Although the men are less numerous and present than women in the story, it is outstanding to see that they have a stronger influence in terms of power. Women have the conducting line of the story’s plot but men, by a simple intervention, are able to earn in power when they speak or when they are mentioned in the story. That is why gender issues are felt when it is a question of power in the story. Thereby, the essay will focus on how the patriarchal dominance affects the representation of women in this postcolonial story. An author named Justin Edwards made an article on gender and a few examples from his work will allow to make connexions with some passages of Garcia’s work.

The patriarch over women in Dreaming in Cuban is symbolized by a flat character, Jorge Del Pino, whose intervention is decisive in Lourdes’ life. Even if men are less present than women in Dreaming in Cuban, Jorge has kept an influential discourse to say at a precise moment. He is already deceased when he confides himself in Lourdes who is able to interact with his ghost. Jorge is dead when he tells a shocking truth to his girl. His role of father has already an influential aspect but his approach symbolizes this patriarchal role of the men of the family. By saying “you haven’t begun to understand, Lourdes” (195) he is about to say something that she is not aware. He is about to drop a bomb, metaphorically, to touch her feelings and get her attention. By being “silent for a long time” (195), he takes the control of the situation and it foresees an upcoming shock that Lourdes is about to get. In Edwards’ article about gender it is said that “silence is used as a patriarchal weapon of control” (Edwards 103) and this silence symbolizes Jorge’s control in this situation with his daughter. Silence is associated to the terms of “weapon” and “control” that have a strong connotation of dominance. Jorge has the hold on both the situation and Lourdes. The fact that anyone speaks during this silence is because Lourdes is captivated by the revelation he is about to tell. The control enables Jorge to decide of the turn his declaration should take. That is why his revelation about Celia’s love for Lourdes and his advice of coming back to Cuba is followed by Lourdes. Besides, another declaration deserves to be mentioned. Indeed, Jorge’s desire, talking about Lourdes “to own you for myself. And you always be mine” (196) symbolizes this male ownership over women. The verb “own” and the pronoun “mine” has again a strong connotation of appropriation. Jorge wants his daughter for himself that is partly why he decided to send Celia in an asylum. The other reason is because she was in love with a Spaniard.

Lourdes’ rape symbolizes the inferiority of women over the power of men. The verbal attack she made when the military attacked her husband Rufino has had repercussions on her. Indeed, by feeling humiliated by this women, the militaries took their revenge because they are representatives of power within the country. People have to show them respect and they wanted to show their superiority by attacking Rufino. They wouldn’t be victims of a women so one of the two soldiers “placed the knife flat across her belly and raped her” (71). Speaking of Lourdes, this rape is a form of loss because she undergoes the consequences of her behaviour with the soldiers. The knife that the soldier uses to carve an inexplicable message in Lourdes’ belly is an obvious symbol of male power. This victimization of the female by this masculine power characterize Castro’s revolutionary movement. Therefore, that is true to say that in this case “women are usually the creatures of a male power fantasy” (Edwards 98). The transformation of women into “creatures” symbolizes the superiority of men in this example. Besides, this aspect of “fantasy” let the reader thinks that this is a kind of a game for the men. The soldiers’ grade speaks for them and let them do things they wouldn’t do if they were simple citizens.

According to Pilar, the historical events reflect inequality between race and they put women at a more inferior stage than men. History only remembers great masculine leaders whereas it should also remember other actors like women, for their suffering in the shadow of these men. She says she would remember other things in history, like “the time there was a freak hailstorm in the Congo and the women took it for a sign they should rule” (28) or “the life of prostitutes in Bombay” (28). She indirectly mentions black women to denounce that there are already not enough mentions of women in history books. Therefore, it creates a gap with what is known from history books. She says that “we only know about Charlemagne and Napoleon because they fought their way into posterity” (28). Their presence in books is due as a reward for the fights they made. People know them because they deserved it. The fact that men have power is a thing but but no mention of women shows that there is an opposition between both gender and race. Pilar shares her point of view and her voice joins a declaration made in Justin Edwards’ article. In this article it is said that “silence is used as a patriarchal weapon of control, voicing is self-defining, liberational, and cathartic in light of the fact that women are treated as second-class citizens” ( Edwards 103). If Pilar decided to stay silent, her voice would have never been heard. However, by giving her opinion it is “liberational” because it is better to say things than keep it for herself and it is also revealing of her personality. She speaks for the women’s cause because history do not show enough gratitude to them this is why Pilar makes the reader understand that women are unfairly considered as inferior to men.

Through the story of Dreaming in Cuban, women are the narrative voices who say the bottom of their thoughts and describe the characters’ life. However, amongst the density of information in the story, this is some short passages which make the difference and provide details on a bigger issue that touch the women in the story. This matter is the patriarchal influence that the reader discovers by giving a particular attention to the gender differences within the book.

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.

In Cristina Garcia’s novel Dreaming in Cuban as in a lot of other postcolonial works can be found supernatural events like ghosts or visions. These supernatural events happening in a realistic context are also called magical realism. In this novel, all of the three generations of the family Del Pino women encounter such events and are able to communicate with their relatives, even though they are not living in the same country. In this story, magical realism helps protagonists to overcome physical boundaries and to see or hear each other. It keeps all three women closer, even if there have been altercations between them in the past. Magical realism reveals to the protagonists what had been kept secret and what they have not been able to hear and see.

Although it is not the first time that a character is confronted with a supernatural event, the moment when Celia “closes her eyes and speaks to her granddaughter, imagines her words as slivers of light piercing the murky night” (Garcia 7) marks the first time that a character is able to interact with another one by telepathy. As Maria Rice Bellamy suggests in her book titled Bridges to Memory: Postmemory in Contemporary Ethnic American Women’s Fiction, “Pilar remains closely connected to Celia and Cuba through telepathic conversations that overcome the physical distance between New York and Cuba” (Bellamy 79). It is therefore by means of magical realism that these two protagonists are able to communicate together even though thousands of kilometres separate them and they have not seen each other physically since Pilar and her family left Cuba. Telepathy helps them to keep in touch and to stay close with each other. As a proof that telepathy really exists between Celia and her granddaughter, the young girl says that she “hear[s] her speaking to [her] at night, just before [she] fall[s] asleep” (Garcia 29). This communication, as said before, brings the two women closer to each other as Celia tell her granddaughter that “she wants to see [Pilar] again” and that she “tells [her] she loves [her]” (Garcia 29). These conversations are so strong that it is part of what motives Pilar to take the trip back to Cuba.

These visions can also lead to communication in another way than by having a spoken conversation. Sometimes, the protagonists are only able to see the others but not to hear them. It is the case for Celia, at the beginning of the novel, when Jorge, her deceased husband, “emerges from the light and comes toward her, taller than the palms, walking on water” (Garcia 5). Here, three points can be seen which immediately set the story into the magical realism category. Jorge is seen as a gigantic person, walking on water and, above all, he is supposed to be dead. Communication is difficult, as Celia can only see her husband’s mouth move but she “cannot read his immense lips” (Garcia 5). Here, the communication is broken, as Celia is not able to understand Jorge. However, as Bellamy specifies, “Garcia uses alternative forms of connection, specifically total recall and dreams, to create relational bridges between characters even when they do not consciously seek them” (Bellamy 80). As she explains, the protagonists are communicating even if they think that they cannot understand each other. It is unconscious. Another example is found when Pilar has an “image of Abuela Celia underwater, standing on a reef” who “calls to [Pilar] but [she] can’t hear her” (Garcia 220). In her work titled Rediscovering Magical Realism in the Americas, Shannin Shroeder links this vision to “Celia’s walk into the ocean at the end of the novel” (Shroeder 70). Again, this vision helps the two characters to communicate, even if no pronounced word is understood.

Lourdes also encounters such unnatural events, especially when her deceased father “greets [her] forty days after she buried him” (Garcia 64). Although she fears this first meeting with her father and comes back home with a “presentiment of disaster” (Garcia 65), the other times she sees him will benefit her. According to Bellamy, the use of magical realism “facilitate the interaction of people distanced by ideology, geography and even death” (Bellamy 79). It works for Lourdes on every point Bellamy makes. As her father finally reveals her that her mother loved her and that her sister Felicia died, he finally persuades Lourdes to “go to them” (Garcia 196). This communication between Lourdes and Jorge therefore helps her to get closer to her Cuban family, distant to her geographically. In addition, she meets there her mother Celia, who is also distant to her ideologically. Celia is militating in favour of Fidel Castro’s regime but her daughter is completely against it. She even called Lourdes a “traitor to the revolution” (Garcia 26) when the latter decided to leave Cuba to go to the United States. This marks how much they have distant ideology. Finally, the fact that she has conversations with her deceased father makes her interact with somebody distant to her because of death. In his book titled Postcolonial Literature, Justin D. Edwards writes that writer Toni Morrison “asserts that the literary use of haunting offers the possibility of representing ‘unspeakable things unspoken’” (Edwards 119). In Dreaming in Cuban, the moment when Jorge reveals to Lourdes what really happened between him and Celia marks a haunting scene of a ghost revealing what had not been spoken during Jorge’s life.

Throughout the novel, multiples supernatural events happen and help the protagonists to interact together. Magical realism allows them to overcome every boundary of any nature. Even if the characters are very distant in a geographical way, political beliefs and even if they are separated by death, these supernatural events build bridges allowing them to communicate together. It gives them the power to speak about what is unspeakable in their life and tighten the links between them.

Works Cited:

Bellamy, Maria Rice. Bridges to Memory: Postmemory in Contemporary Ethnic American Women’s Fiction. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2015: 76-102

Edwards, Justin D. Postcolonial Literature. New York: PALGRAVE MACMILLAN, 2008: 118-128

Garcia, Cristina. Dreaming in Cuban. New York: Ballantine Books, 1993

Schroeder, Shannin. Rediscovering Magical Realism in the Americas. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004: 69-82