Dreaming in Cuban
DREAMING IN CUBAN dramatizes the profound interconnections among three generations of Cuban women. Their memories, dreams and hopes are gradually revealed and interlinked, and the importance to them of Cuba and what it means to be Cuban is explored.
For Celia del Pino, her three children, and her grandchildren, Cuba is a complex construct of memories and realities. Celia’s story frames the novel; sets of her unmailed monthly letters to her first love, a Spaniard who returned to Spain in 1935 just before the Spanish Civil War, are included at regular intervals throughout the book, in chronological order. The novel is structured as Celia’s transmission to her granddaughter Pilar of all she knows. The family members are introduced in the immediate present of 1972 and their various stories gradually mesh and explain each other as they recount the events of the next eight years.
Various points of view toward the Cuban Revolution of 1959 are represented by family members. Celia is an enthusiastic supporter of Fidel Castro (El Lider in the book): She volunteers for sugar cane harvesting and vaccination campaigns, keeps watch over her stretch of the coast, and serves as a civilian judge in a people’s court. One of her daughters has stayed in Havana but is indifferent to politics, her son is an avid backer of Communism and has gone to live in Czechoslovakia, and her other daughter, for whom the Revolution meant rape and dispossession, has gone into bitter exile in Brooklyn. It is young Pilar who connects these disparate views.
The novel is full of the specific realities of Cuban experience, from food rationing to idealism. But it is primarily about the fragile balance between passion and obsession. Magic and imagination and historical reality fuse in the musical rhythms of DREAMING IN CUBAN.
Bibliography
America. CLXVII, July 18, 1992, p. 39. A review of Dreaming in Cuban.
Belles Lettres. VIII, Fall, 1992, p. 15. A review of Dreaming in Cuban.
Boswell, Thomas D. The Cuban American Experience: Culture, Images and Perspectives. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Allanheld, 1984.
The Christian Science Monitor. March 24, 1992, p. 13. A review of Dreaming in Cuban.
Davis, Thulani. “Fidel Castro Between Them: Dreaming in Cuban.” The New York Times Book Review, May 17, 1992, 14.
Eder, Richard. “Cuban Revolution Tugs on Family Ties.” Los Angeles Times, March 12, 1992, p. E10. Generally laudatory discussion of García’s novel. Eder praises García’s realistic passages as “exquisite” but observes that she is sometimes “indulgent and awkward” in her use of magical elements.
Gann, L. H., and Peter J. Duignan. The Hispanics in the United States: A History. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1986. An overview of the history and culture of the various groups of Hispanic immigrants to the United States. Of particular interest in relation to Dreaming in Cuban is chapter 6, “The Cubans,” which deals with the Cuban-born population of the United States.
García, Christina. “. . . And There Is Only My Imagination Where Our History Should Be: An Interview with Christina García.” Interview by Iraida H. Lopez. Michigan Quarterly Review 33 (Summer, 1994): 604-617. García discusses her background as a Cuban immigrant in New York City and the influence her ethnic identity has had on her writing. She also addresses the political situation in Cuba, as well as the strong anti-communist feelings of the Cuban population in Miami. A useful supplement to the novel.
García, María Cristina. “Adapting to Exile: Cuban Women in the United States, 1959-1973.” Latino Studies Journal 2 (May, 1991): 17-33. This scholar (who is...
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not the author ofDreaming in Cuban) suggests that Cuban women in exile, faced with the necessity of working to support their families, have experienced expanded roles in the United States. Willing to work for low wages, these women have secured more jobs than their male counterparts, and have achieved political and economic clout. Published before Dreaming in Cuban, the article provides excellent background for the novel’s political base.
Kirkus Reviews. Review of Dreaming in Cuban, by Cristina García. 60 (January 1, 1992): 7. Brief, hostile review that claims that the novel “lacks sufficient freshness of insight to be consistently compelling.”
Migration World Magazine. XX, Number 2, 1992, p. 39. A review of Dreaming in Cuban.
Miller, Susan. “Caught Between Two Cultures.” Newsweek 119 (April 20, 1992): 78-79. Describes García’s visit to Cuba in 1984 as the impetus for writing Dreaming in Cuban. García is quoted saying that Latino immigrants are bringing a new voice to literature in English, one that is enriched by its dual heritage.
Mitchell, David T. “National Families and Familial Nations: Communista Americans in Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 15 (Spring, 1996): 51-60. Mitchell analyzes Pilar, the main character in García’s novel. He explores Pilar’s failure to belong to either family or nation, expressions of her artistic struggle, and the contradictory coexistence of national and family unity Pilar experiences upon her return to Cuba.
The New Yorker. LXVIII, June 1, 1992, p. 86. A review of Dreaming in Cuban.
Pérez Firmat, Gustavo. Life on the Hyphen: The Cuban American Way. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994.
Publishers Weekly. CCXXXIX, January 13, 1992, p. 46. A review of Dreaming in Cuban.
Stavans, Illan. “The Other Voice.” The Bloomsbury Review 12 (July, 1992): 5. Discusses the emergence of literature by Hispanics writing in English, including Cristina García. The author, a Mexican novelist and critic, argues that Hispanic writers often travel between the United States and their native countries, making assimilation into the mainstream difficult and cultural longing a predominant theme.
Ugalde, Sharon Keefe. “Process, Identity, and Learning to Read: Female Writing and Feminist Criticism in Latin America Today.” Latin American Research Review 24, no. 1 (1989): 222-232.
Unterburger, Amy, ed. Who’s Who Among Hispanic Americans, 1992-1993. 2d ed. Detroit: Gale Research, 1992. A brief notation on Cristina García includes personal information about the author, including names of family members, educational background, and details about her career as a journalist.
The Washington Post Book World. XXII, March 1, 1992, p. 9. A review of Dreaming in Cuban.
Weiss, Amelia. Review of Dreaming in Cuban, by Cristina García. Time 139 (March 23, 1992): 67. Rapturous commentary on the novel. States of García that, “Like a priestess, in passages of beautiful island incantation, she conjures her Cuban heritage” from across the political and physical gulf separating Cuba and the United States.