Every day, we see refugees on the news, people fleeing revolutions, finding themselves with no ‘home’ and constantly reconstructing their lives. Cristina García, with her novel Dreaming in Cuban, explores the consequences of the Cuban Revolution that took place in 1953. Identity issues, broken families, generational gap and political conflicts are at the centre of García’s work. Pilar Puente is one of the many characters of this novel to go through the struggles that followed the revolution. In fact, Pilar’s need to escape America to find salvation in Cuba is emphasized in this passage (GARCÌA 25, 26). By means of an extended metaphor, lexical field and a contrast between two verb tenses, this passage confronts the reader to the misery she is going through in America and the comfort she hopes to find in Cuba.

Firstly, the passage opens with an extended metaphor of superficiality and consumerism which can be interpreted as the occidental lifestyle. Superficiality and consumerism are characterized by the relationship between Pilar’s father and the ‘beauty queen’ (GARCÌA 25). The superficiality is highlighted with the description of the woman. Only described physically, the beauty she radiates is truly fake. Her hair is ‘blond and puffy’ (25) but it is only ‘bleached hair’; She is a canon of beauty (‘1950s beauty queen’) but she ‘[has] gone to seed’ and her face is ‘waxy [and] bloated’ (25). As can be seen, her beauty is based on fake ornaments. She characterizes the superficiality of the occidental culture. Moreover, the occidental consumerism is emphasized with their actions. Consumerism is ‘the belief that it is good for a society or an individual person to buy and use a large quantity of goods and services’[1]. Consumerism is the action of buying a great number of consumables because it is seen as “good”. For example, the first thing the reader learns about Pilar is that she ‘[is] trying on French-style garters and push-up brassieres’ in a shop (25). Right after that, she is ‘hiding behind racks of hats and on-sale sweaters’ (25). There is such a large number of goods that she is able to hide behind them. Thus representing the ridiculousness of consumerism. It is further seen that consumerism is used as an excuse for the couple to see each other: ‘They walk down Fulton Street arm in arm, pretending to window-shop.’ (25) To sum up, consumerism and superficiality are characterized in this passage by Pilar and the couple.

Even though Pilar almost embraced this style of living at the beginning by trying on goods and ornaments but she later realizes that she resents this lifestyle. Through a lexical field of disgust, this passage shows her repugnance towards this lifestyle. The moment she sees this woman with her father is clearly a turning point. As said earlier, she was living this lifestyle, but, as she ‘[sees] them’, she panics: ‘Shit! I can’t believe this!’ Indeed, in this passage, the physical attributes of the lady are often linked with elements of disgust: ‘like a 1950s beauty queen gone to seed’; ‘flicking, disgusting tongue’; ‘It makes me sick’; ‘that flycatcher tongue of hers’ (25). Pilar cannot stand this superficiality and realizes that the consumerism based lifestyle is a nonsense as she sees them ‘walking down’. Indeed, she realizes that the shops are ‘just a run-down stretch of outdated stores with merchandise that’s been there since the Bay of Pigs’ (25). It is through the lexical field of disgust that the reader can understand the Pilar’s misery. Pilar slowly realizes that she is living a lifestyle based on consumption and appearances and it disgusts her.

Following her disgust, is her will to go back to Cuba. Her decision to return there is accentuated in this passage by the opposition of two verb tenses: present and future. These two verb tenses are geographically attached: present for the United States and future for Cuba. As said before, when Pilar is talking about her life in America, it is associated with disgust. Furthermore, it is narrated in the present tense: ‘I think I hear’; ‘I stick my head’; ‘She has’; ‘They walk’; etc. This present tense is associated to her present life and is therefore synonym of disgust. She is not satisfied with her present life… Which leads her envision a different future. This future is linked to Cuba, as when she thinks about it, there is a shift of verb tense that occurs: ‘I’m going back to Cuba’; ‘I’ll be able to’; ‘She’ll be sitting’; ‘She’ll smell’; ‘There’ll be’ (26). The opposition between these two tenses emphasizes the struggle she is going through and the political ambivalence of the character. Not only this, but the opposition between her present and her future are opposed in terms of lexical field too. The future she envisions is a future full of hope, a future where all of her senses are pleased: ‘overlooking the sea’; ‘she’ll smell of salt and violet water’; ‘She’ll stroke my cheek with her cool hands, sing quietly in my ear’ (26). The lexical field of the five senses highlights the opposition between present and future. Pilar’s present lifestyle is full of disgust whereas her future is a collection of physical bliss. On the whole, there is a clear opposition between America and Cuba. Both geographical regions are associated with a lexical field and verb tenses that are diametrically opposed: disgust and the present tense for America and the five senses and the future tense for Cuba.

All in all, this passage shows Pilar’s necessity to go back to Cuba and to leave the repugnance of America. Through an extended metaphor of superficiality and consumerism characterized by the couple and a lexical field of disgust the passage highlights her disgust toward this lifestyle. Thus leading to her hope to find bliss in Cuba emphasized by an opposition between present and future tense both geographically attached to Cuba and America. This passage is a clear turning point in the life of Pilar as we will see later in the book where she is self-reflecting on this precise moment (p.138).

Bibliography

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

[1] http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/consumerism

The novel Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina García is filled with themes, a lot of them linked to identity, exile and family. In this novel, each primary female character has her own issues, and her own way of coping with them. However, they all have one thing in common: memory is a big part of their lives and identities, and of the way they deal with their own problems. In this essay, I will discuss the role of memory in the lives of the four main characters: Celia, Felicia, Lourdes and Pilar.

Memories are a big part of Celia’s life. As a matter of fact, the way Jorge and his family treated her in her early years, trying to erase all trace of remembrance in her mind, has left a mark in her that can never disappear. However, as Maya Socolovsky points out, there is a paradox in the way Celia “remembers the process that was intended to create forgetfulness” (Socolovsky, 150). The letters that she writes for her old lover are a good way to show that she has not forgotten this violent experience (Socolovsky, 151). Later, Celia arranges her entire life around the Cuban Revolution, even replacing her husband’s photograph by one of Castro: “[Lourdes] snatches the picture of El Líder off Abuela’s night table. It’s framed in antique silver, wedged over the face of Abuelo Jorge, whose blue eye peers out from behind El Líder’s army cap.” (219). The novel ends on the scene of Celia drowning herself in the ocean, but only after making sure that her granddaughter Pilar will carry on the family’s memory, showing once again how important it is to her: “I will no longer write to you, mi amor. She will remember everything.” (245).

Dreaming in Cuban mentions a scene from Felicia’s childhood, where she plays on the beach before a tidal wave appears. In her article, Elena Machado Sáez points out that as the wave withdraws, little Felicia can see the sand at her feet, and that it “serves as a metaphor for the narrative record of history”, while the tidal wave represents the Revolution, “[breaking] with this historical record and [blurring] the boundaries between the public sand-history and the private homes of the families” (Sáez, 141). This shows that memory, both historical and personal, has always been a big part of this family. As a result of her illness, Felicia is actually “unable to produce representations of memory”, which explains her confusion and misunderstanding of most situations (Socolovsky, 154). To fill this void, Felicia uses her imagination as we can see in the novel: “Felicia’s mind floods with thoughts, thoughts from the past, from the future, other people’s thoughts” (76). Sáez even notices that “Felicia’s amnesia mirrors a national one, identifying the Revolution as a break within Cuban time”. In fact, she argues that Cuba, being isolated from the rest of the world, will fall to its demise just as Felicia does (Sáez, 141). In conclusion, memory is very important in Felicia’s story, but only through its absence. Her lack of memory is what eventually leads to her death.

Lourdes’ perspective on memory is somewhat contradictory. On one side, she fears her traumatic experiences (her rape and the death of her unborn child) will be forgotten by the world and serve no purpose. The novel states that Lourdes “hungers for a violence of nature, terrible and permanent, to record the evil” (227). She wants her experience to be meaningful, to stay in the world in some way (Socolovsky, 146-147). Simultaneously, Lourdes wishes to erase the memories of the past, to distance herself from it and to achieve “complete forgetting” (Socolovsky, 151). In other words: Lourdes wants to erase her traumatic memories from her own mind, to be released from the pain they inflict upon her; however, she hopes that the world will not forget them and that they will not have been pointless.

The last character I will talk about is Pilar. Memory is a fundamental element of Pilar’s life and identity. She thinks in a unique way and asks unusual questions, like, “who chooses what we should know or what’s important?” (Dreaming in Cuban, 28). This already shows certain maturity in her awareness of collective and individual memory. Additionally, the novel states that Pilar remembers everything: “I was only two years old when I left Cuba but I remember everything that’s happened to me since I was a baby” (Dreaming in Cuban, 26). However, Sáez points out that as Pilar gets older, the knowledge she had been acquiring through hearing her grandmother talk to her at night disappears when their connection fades, and, like Felicia (but not to the same extent), she is forced to fill in the blanks with her imagination (Sáez, 132). It is also interesting to notice that Pilar’s political views are somewhere between Lourdes’ and Celia’s, and so is her memory of Cuba. This is represented by the fact that Pilar has the opportunity to reconnect with her origins through music albums and santería herbs, but that she remains “ambivalent regarding the access these products supposedly provide” (Sáez, 136). Pilar inherits her grandmother’s spirituality, but it is influenced by the skepticism she gets from her mother. Celia gives Pilar a mission: that of preserving her family history. Her return to Cuba allows her to reconnect with this mission and with the elements of Cuba she has been missing (Sáez, 131). However, she fails her grandmother, as she is not able to complete her mission. Pilar realizes that Cuba is too complex to be recorded entirely: “Nothing can record this, I think. Not words, not paintings, not photographs” (Dreaming in Cuban, 241).

Through the short analysis of the role of memory in the lives of the four main female characters, I have proven how important it is in the novel in general. Additionally, we have seen that memory can vary enormously depending on the past experiences and the personality of each character. Memory is an important factor of personal and cultural identity, whether the person might be holding on to precious memories – like Celia and Pilar – or desperately trying to forget the past – like Felicia and Lourdes.

Bibliography:

Primary:

Cristina GARCÍA, Dreaming in Cuban, Ballantine Books, New York, 1993.

Secondary:

Elena Machado SÁEZ, The Global Baggage of Nostalgia in Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban, MELUS, Vol.30, No.4, Home: Forged or Forged? (Winter, 2005), pp.129-147.

Maya SOCOLOVSKY, Unnatural violences: Counter-memory and preservations in Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban and The Agüero Sisters, Lit: Literature Interpretation Theory, 11:2, 143-167.

The Connection between the Past and the Present through Celia’s Letters and Memories in Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban

Memory is a recurrent theme in Cristina García’s novel Dreaming in Cuban. Being the oldest main character alive, Celia is the one that has the most stories to tell. She is the only character that writes letters and the reader knows their precise content. Celia writes down her memories because she is a passionate woman. With the letters she writes to Gustavo and then by sharing a peculiar connection with her granddaughter, Celia attempts to forget the loneliness of her past showing therefore how past and present are entangled in the novel.

Celia is described as a lonely and dreamy character. “She [lives] in her memories” (92) and she fears that her past “is eclipsing the present” (92). Also, “despite all her activities, she sometimes feels lonely. Not the loneliness of previous years, of a reluctant life by the sea, but a loneliness borne of the inability to share her joy” (119). Celia is thus represented as a melancholic character unable to share her happiness. However, Celia has a peculiar connection which seems comforting with Pilar. She “remembers the afternoons on the porch when her infant granddaughter seemed to understand her very thoughts. For many years, Celia spoke to Pilar during the darkest part of the night, but then their connection suddenly died.”(119) Celia misses the connection they managed to have while they were apart respectively in Cuba and in the United States. “Pilar feels much more connected to Abuela Celia than to [her mom]” (176) This connection is surprising because the young girl barely spent time with her grandmother. Celia and Pilar share emotions and experiences. For example, Pilar hears her grandmother “speaking to [her] at night just before [she] fall[s] asleep. [Celia] tells [her] stories about her life […] She seems to know everything that’s happened to [Pilar]” (29). From her perspective, Pilar “know[s] what [her] grandmother dreams” (218). The supernatural experiences they share illustrate the bonds of the two characters. Celia has a caring attitude towards Pilar and she seems much attached to her granddaughter. She is relieved when she says that “everything will be better now that Pilar is here” (230). It is as though Pilar brings comfort to her.

In opposition with the previous reassurance, Celia experiences a strong feeling of loneliness when her husband Jorge is not there. The time seemed too long to her during her past, shortly after she married Jorge. It seemed that “Jorge’s business trips stretched unendurably” (40). What adds to her sadness is that she cannot get along with Jorge’s sister and their mother. What is more, she still has her ex-lover Gustavo on her mind because “for twenty-five years, Celia wrote her Spanish lover a letter […] each month” (38). But Celia never sent the letters. Her aim was to recollect the most important events such as when the Revolution in Cuba was happening: “The rebels attacked again, this time in Oriente” (208). Celia also wrote about her children’s births and how she was melancholic about the past, particularly in her letter from April 1945 in which she writes “I remember our spring walks through Havana” (98). It implies that Celia misses Gustavo. She demonstrates her caring attitude when she uses words such as “Querido Gustavo” (49) (“Dear Gustavo”) in her letters. In one of them, Celia writes “I still love you, Gustavo, but it’s a habitual love, a wound in the knee that predicts rain. Memory is a skilled seducer. I write to you because I must.” (97) The young Celia is in love but it hurts her. Writing letters has become a habit. By putting words down, these important moments are implemented in her memory.

As Justin D. Edwards mentions in his book Postcolonial Literature, “memory becomes an important way of uniting the past with the present” (130). Eventually, the novel ends with the reader understanding that Celia stops writing letters because Pilar is now born. The last letter of the novel hints that from then on, Pilar will be the recipient of the memories of her grandmother. The last letter says: “Pilar Puente del Pino […] was born today. It is also my birthday. I am fifty years old. […] [Pilar] will remember everything.” (245). The last sentence of the novel contrasts with Celia’s declaration after Lourdes’ birth: “I will not remember her name” (43). It is a striking comment coming from a mother. Celia could not have the same bound with her own daughter. Memory is a central theme in Celia’s discussions, firstly in its mention in the letters and secondly when she speaks of Pilar and Lourdes.

Another point expressed in Edwards’ book is the following: the “narration […] interweaves two stories, one of the past and another of the present, mixing experience and recollection, history and memory throughout.” (Edwards 134) In fact, past and present are mixed in Dreaming in Cuban too. This novel having a non-linear plot, Celia’s letters about past events are found in between other chapters, giving another meaning to the present. Even in the non-epistolary chapters, Celia’s character is linked to memories. When Celia is lost in her thoughts her “memories flood back to her, the past [being] revived and resuscitated” (Edwards 132). But one also observes another major effect of memory (that could have been troublesome for Celia): “in time every event becomes an exertion of memory and is subject to invention” (Edwards 132). It means that memory is not precise and therefore Celia cannot be perfectly sure about her memories. That is why writing letters is way for Celia to have a more realistic memory of the events (instead of trusting her thoughts only).

Celia’s desire to recollect memories is shown through the wide content of the letters she writes to Gustavo. It also serves the purpose of ordering her thoughts and recollecting the important facts of her life. By having a peculiar connection with Pilar, Celia has a way of sharing her memories with the young woman. The last letter Celia writes is a symbol of the connection between past and present.

How Pilar Puente Shows her Creativity with her Descriptions in Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban

Caught in a context of a shattered family, Pilar Puente appears as a creative teenager. When she stares at the sky, she discovers a new scenery at which she is not used to. Her description of it reveals her strong interest in painting. Pilar’s attention to details is shown through the use of specific vocabulary and the references to buildings’ characteristics. The extract used in this essay is from page 60 of Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban. It starts by “I still don’t know […] anything is possible”. The use of artistic metaphors, precise architecture vocabulary and interest in shapes in this extract of Dreaming in Cuban highlights Pilar Puente’s vision of a painter that sees every details.

Once she gets to Florida, Pilar discovers new buildings and a different architecture. By thinking “in New York, the sky gets too much competition” (60), Pilar is referring to the high buildings and skyscrapers in her city. The metaphor of height she uses accentuates that the buildings in New York are very high and that they almost fight together to be the highest. She notices that the buildings are different in Florida, where “the land is so flat” without all the very high buildings around. What is more, there are also “huge Spanish colonial houses and avenues” to which Pilar is not accustomed to at all. She notices that the architecture is different and her precise description highlights the fact that she sees everything, every detail. She knows the exact terms to describe the surroundings. She makes reference to the “colonial houses”. The fact that Pilar knows this precise term shows her knowledge in architecture. Also, she describes the place as a “one of the ritzy neighborhoods of Miami”. By looking at it, Pilar guesses that rich people must live there. She describes it using irony, but it also shows that she perceives elements in these buildings that lead her thinking it is a luxurious neighborhood. Later in the novel, on page 216, Pilar thinks “all Mom says is that the buildings in Havana are completely decayed […] What I notice most are the balconies.” Pilar is aware of the architecture and she is interested by it. Her mother only sees the drawbacks while Pilar views it more positively since she is more familiar with the subject.

Not only is Pilar accustomed to the architecture, but she is also used to landscapes. While Pilar is starring at the horizon, she thinks: “the sky seems to take over everything, announcing itself in a way you can’t ignore”. This statement of occupied space emphasizes the greatness of the sky. The latter is described as dangerous and threatening. With that statement and especially by using a formulation in the negative form, Pilar accentuates the fact that no one can miss such spectacle. Pilar is impressed by the sky and finds it wonderful. At this point, “the sky looks like a big bruise of purples and oranges”. This simile is a proof that Pilar’s thoughts are artistic too, while it makes it clear that Pilar has a sense for painting and colors. This artistic comparison with the colors highlights the fact that Pilar is very familiar with them and how they are arranged together. Considering Pilar’s thoughts earlier in the novel on page 59, it is understood that painting itself is metaphorical. “Painting is its own language”, Pilar’s statement means that painting itself is complicated. It is her way to express herself. What is more, it implies that painting might be hard to understand because it has a deeper meaning to her than simply a combination of colors. She also expresses her dream to “be a famous artist someday” which would fit her because she already has the sensitivity of a talented painter.

Pilar has skills in painting but she also pays attention to details, shapes and sizes. She looks at the shops and the mannequins inside. “The shops along the Miracle Mile look incredibly old-fashioned. It’s like all the mannequins have been modeled after astronauts’ wives.” Pilar uses irony in her statement and says that the shapes of the mannequins are all alike. While Pilar is observing them, she notices their figures and their shapes. Pilar pays attention to their features which are necessary aspects to bear in mind as a painter. Pilar is therefore a great observer. Another example that highlights her ability is that she notices that “all the streets in Coral Gables have Spanish names- Segovia, Ponce de Leon, Alhambra”. Pilar looks attentively at the street names written in Spanish. It implies that she pays attention to details, this is another great quality that a painter can have.

While Pilar notices details, she also uses some expressions that are typical for creative people. Firstly, she uses the words “I imagine”. It is important for a painter to imagine before doing. Pilar needs to picture something in her mind before actually being able to paint it. She needs to visualize what she intends to paint. Secondly, by thinking that “anything is possible”, Pilar demonstrates an interesting idea because it illustrates her determination as a teenager. Moreover, this dead metaphor itself states truly that “anything is possible” in painting. Pilar is free to paint whatever she chooses. Her imagination won’t be restrained. Thirdly, Pilar’s “mind whirs this way and that, weighing the alternatives”. The latter dead metaphor expressing doubt shows a feature that creative people might share: uncertainty.

To conclude, the precise vocabulary that Pilar uses shows her knowledge of the architecture of the buildings around her. Pilar notices colors, shapes and sizes. In this extract, the metaphors work in an artistic way reinforcing the painter’s eyes’ view of the character. The artistic metaphors highlight the fact that Pilar was creative from a young age (her adolescence) and that painting is necessary for her at this moment of her life. It is constantly on her mind. The following of the novel will prove that her interest does not decrease.

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.