The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

by Oscar Hijuelos

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The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

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The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love is the second novel by Oscar Hijuelos, a novelist born in New York of Cuban parents. As he did in his first novel, Our House in the Last World (1983), Hijuelos here explores the experience of a family that begins in one world, Cuba, and continues with subsequent generations in another, the United States. In both novels, the characters who dominate the narrative are the Cuban immigrants, but the perspective is that of the children born in the United States.

Hijuelos has been the recipient of numerous prestigious grants to support his work, including awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. His stature as a serious novelist is confirmed in The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, a work that reconstructs the popular culture of a particular era and, in a less specific way, evokes the anguish and pain of human existence. While this novel gives some attention to the predicament of the Cuban immigrant in New York, it deals much more with what it means to be a man. It is also a novel about being female, for it reveals much about the way men relate to women and see themselves anchored in their existence by their sexual relationships.

A measure of Hijuelos’ novelistic skill is his remarkable success in maintaining an elegant, refined narrative tone while telling a story replete with scatological sexual details. The life’ of Cesar Castillo is documented by parallel histories of his professional life as the leader of a Cuban rumba-mambo orchestra in New York City and of his sexual relationships with a multitude of women. The very detailed presentation of the sensuous, slightly sordid milieu of the 1950’s Latin music scene is intermingled with the portrayal of Cesar as a strutting peacock obsessed with his uncanny gift for pleasing women with his enormous penis.

Because the narrative is structured through two obsessions—the sensuous music and the indefatigable phallus—it seems at every moment in danger of becoming trite, simplistic, or even pornographic. Hijuelos saves his story through some very wise choices. One might expect the novel to become the portrayal of a bandleader haunted by his limited success in the music business. This character, however, is content playing music, even when he finally has to support himself working as the superintendent of an apartment building. In like fashion, the narrative might have been a pathetic history of a man who loses the sexual potency on which he has based his own value in the world. Instead, it is a sensitive portrayal of a man who accepts his extraordinary prowess as simply a fact of life and recognizes that the source of his disillusionment and despair is the irrevocable passage of time. Cesar discovers that human existence is fragile and transitory, and that it is recoverable only through memory.

The narrative represents Cesar’s act of remembering his life, as he spends the last night of his life in 1980 in the Hotel Splendour, a seedy New York flophouse that in its better days was Cesar’s favorite spot for entertaining Vanna Vane—Miss Mambo of June, 1954—and dozens of other beautiful women. Cesar listens to his record album from 1956, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, and reconstructs his life of music and sex.

The narrator of the novel, however, is not Cesar but Eugenio Castillo, the son of his brother Nestor. Eugenio’s prologue to the narrative is a first-person testimony in which he introduces the event that dominates the novel, the appearance of Cesar and...

(This entire section contains 1623 words.)

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Nestor as Ricky Ricardo’s cousins, Manny and Alfonso, in an episode of “I Love Lucy.” The epilogue, another first-person account, is Eugenio’s narrative of his visit to Hollywood after Cesar’s death to talk to Desi Arnaz about his uncle and his father. Between the prologue and the epilogue, the text of remembrance is told by Eugenio as an omniscient narrator who moves freely through the minds of his characters—Nestot; Cesar, Nestor’s wife Delores, Cesar’s many women, and even Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.

In this fictional world of the Mambo Kings, Hijuelos incorporates the historical milieu of the 1950’s Cuban- American experience—the famous bandleaders (Perez Prado, Tito Rodnguez, Miguel Montoya), the leading ballrooms (the Imperial, the Stardust, the Biltmore), the songs (”Besame mucho,” “Twilight in Havana”), and above all, the television show “I Love Lucy.” This show, with its Cuban costar, represents the apotheosis of the Cuban immigrant in America. It also becomes a metaphor of the theme of memory in the novel and a representation of the conjunct of historical and fictional experience present in the narrative. Lucy, Ricky, Manny, and Alfonso are fictional characters in a situation comedy. Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Cesar Castillo, and Nestor Castillo are “historical” figures—real people—within the context of the narrative. Eugenio perceives the episode of “I Love Lucy” as a preserved memory of his father and uncle, a curious blend of the real and the imagined.

In like manner, the narrated text of memory is a blend of the historical and the fictional, both from the perspective of Cesar, the character who remembers, and from the point of view of the reader. Hijuelos, then, is exploring the complex question of the essence of fiction, for his narrative cultivates the parallel phenomena of the fictional experience made to seem real and the remembered experience made to seem immediate and authentic.

Cesar’s brother Nestor also remembers, particularly at the moment that he decides to die. He reconstructs his past, recalling his love affair in Cuba with Maria Rivera, who finally married someone else and who inspired the song, “Beautiful Maria of My Soul,” that the Castillo brothers sang on the television show. In the hours preceding the automobile accident in which he drives Cesar’s car off the road and kills himself, Nestor seems to be deliberately using up his life by remembering every sensory experience that he can. He finally dies because he lives in a world of pain, because he aches with “a lack of understanding about things.”

Cesar also decides to die, in the Hotel Splendour, because he cannot understand the world. He cannot understand why Nestor, happily married to Delores, would suffer and want to die. Nor can he understand why he is isolated and alone, why his frequent lovemaking does not satisfy him, why it makes no difference that women gasp when they see the “thick and cumbersome proportions of his sexual apparatus.” He does not know why he cannot feel close to women, nor does he understand why he breaks off his relationship with Lydia Santos, the only woman he really loved. In the final hours of his last night in the Hotel Splendour, haunted by “layers of macho and doubt, anger and contempt,” Cesar remembers his childhood in Cuba, the abuse he suffered from his father, and the purity of his first adventures in love.

Hijuelos’ novel is a narrative about desire—a desire that manifests itself in Nestor’s writing no less than twenty-two versions of his song, desperately trying to re- create a moment of happiness long past. The desire also inspires Cesar’s macho behavior, because he believes that women want him to be strong, independent, and sexually aggressive. His is a sincere, frustrated desire to love and be loved, a desire finally transformed into his last dream of sexual intercourse with Vanna Vane in the Hotel Splendour, after which, at last, he feels calm and serene. For the first time in that long night of the narrative’s process of remembering, Cesar is able to sleep.

In the text of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, the unfulfilled desire for authentic interpersonal communication, or knowledge, becomes transformed into metaphors of love, sex, friendship, and family. “I Love Lucy” is a comic representation of that longing, for it is a dramatization of the impossibility of authentic communication between male and female. Neither Lucy and Ricky nor Ethel and Fred really understand each other, but they all love and feel loved because it is a television show. Cesar feels unbounding love for every detail of his life in his final hours in the Hotel Splendour, but he does not understand and he does not feel loved.

The television show pervades the text of Hijuelos’ novel. Each time that Eugenio watches the episode of Manny and Alfonso, he sees his father and his uncle in the context of comic misunderstanding. In real life, however, that inability to communicate leads not to hilarity and mirth, but to isolation and solitude. Eugenio reconstructs the text of Cesar’s memory in an attempt to understand his father and his uncle. When he visits Desi Arnaz, Eugenio imagines his father before him, as if Desi’s living room were the set for ’I Love Lucy.” He feels himself pulled back into a world of affection, before torment, before loss, before awareness.” Eugenio’s narrative is, finally, a representation of the desire for unity and oneness, a desire for the huge satin heart that appears in the titles of “I Love Lucy,” a desire for the recovery of that which was lost.

The prologue and epilogue that surround the story of Cesar’s remembered past transform the text into the history of a son’s search for his father, a history of nostalgia for that which is lost. Hijuelos has created an effective narrative that evokes sympathy for characters who are not really very attractive. They are, however, characters who come to possess, too late perhaps, a limited understanding of their own predicament—their mortal condition of longing for the unrecoverable past.

Places Discussed

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Hotel Splendour

Hotel Splendour. Flophouse on New York City’s 125th Street and Lenox Avenue in which Cesar Castillo drinks himself to death, chosen for that purpose so that he can recollect much happier times, when it was a regular venue for fervent bouts of love-making with Vanna Vane. The name is ironically symbolic: for Cesar (unlike Nestor) New York is—at least to begin with—all splendor: a prolific well of sexual and other delights that shows no indication of running dry until Nestor’s death.

*Las Piñas

*Las Piñas. Village in Cuba’s Oriente Province that is near the farm on which the Castillo brothers are born and raised. Three miles from town, the farm is approached by a dirt road which runs alongside the river. It is in the “concert hall” of the local sugar-mill that Cesar first encounters the music that shapes his life and soul and makes contact with bandleader Ernesto Lecuona. Unlike Nestor, the young Cesar is harshly treated by his father, subsequently remembering the farm primarily as a place where he suffered frequent undeserved beatings.

La Salle Street tenement

La Salle Street tenement. Six-story tenement building west of 124th Street that becomes the Castillo brothers’ New York residence. Their fourth-floor apartment is initially rented by Pablo, the cousin with whom they lodge on first arriving in New York, but it becomes theirs when Pablo moves his family to Queens. Following Nestor’s death, when Cesar joins the merchant marines, it becomes the home of Delores, her children, and her second husband; after his return, Cesar obtains the job of building superintendent, with his own apartment on a lower floor and a workroom in the basement. The building—which is home to a rich assortment of ethnicities, is two minutes from the 125th Street El and offers a view from its roof of the Hudson River and Grant’s Tomb—is the foundation-stone of the brothers’ New York experience. Cesar’s changing relationship with it maps the financial and emotional trajectory of his life.

*Havana

*Havana. Cuba’s capital and leading city, where Cesar and Nestor serve the latter part of their “apprenticeship” as professional musicians, while working by day at the Havana Explorer’s Club. Havana serves as a staging ground for their two principal homes, facilitating the break-up of Cesar’s marriage as well as providing a practice-ground for life in the city, compared to which prerevolutionary Havana seems merely a pale echo. It is in Havana’s red-light district, La Marina, that Nestor’s fateful meeting with Maria takes place. Although Cesar marries Luisa in Santiago de Cuba, and first abandons her there, it is in Havana that she remarries; thus Cesar retains a connection to Havana via his daughter Mariela—although that tie is far weaker than the one that binds Nestor inescapably to his homeland. The neurotic nostalgia encapsulated in Nestor’s song “Beautiful Maria of My Soul” wears a romantic disguise, but its subject is as much a symbol of a forsaken home as of a lost love; it is as significant that Nestor’s wife Delores also originates from Havana as it is that his mother is also named Maria.

Park Palace Ballroom

Park Palace Ballroom. Ballroom on New York’s 110th Street and Fifth Avenue that is Cesar’s favorite among the many pickup joints he frequents in his heyday. Its exceptionally luxurious rest rooms accommodate bookies, dealers in magazines, flowers, condoms, and reefers, and shoeshine boys as well as the usual facilities—everything that a Mambo King could possibly desire, save for the women awaiting his reemergence on the dance floor.

*Hollywood

*Hollywood. Section of Los Angeles that is the center of the television and motion picture industries and the place at which the brothers’ career reaches its zenith, when they are befriended by bandleader-actor Desi Arnaz and make a guest appearance on an episode of his I Love Lucy television show. Hollywood’s reward—a few minutes of universal fame and a kind of immortality—is one that even New York cannot grant.

Fan Sagrada

Fan Sagrada. Village in Spain’s Galicia region from which the Castillo brothers’ father emigrated to Cuba and toward which his own life-blighting nostalgia is directed.

Historical Context

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Recent Cuban History

At the turn of the 20th century, after Cuba gained independence from Spain, its government was plagued by political instability, incompetence, and corruption. During the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar emerged as the most influential political figure. Batista was elected president from 1940 to 1944, but in 1952, as the election approached, he orchestrated a military coup, seizing power, suspending the constitution, and appointing himself president. Under his rule, wealthy politicians became even wealthier, while poverty worsened among Cuba's poor. Social services were neglected, leading to widespread disease and illiteracy. Resistance to the government grew, manifesting in labor strikes and protests. In 1956, Fidel Castro, a young lawyer exiled to Mexico for his involvement in a failed revolt following Batista's coup, returned to Cuba. Under his leadership, public dissatisfaction escalated into a full-blown uprising. Despite having few soldiers, Castro's strategic brilliance allowed him to challenge Batista's unmotivated and corrupt military. The United States, frustrated with the Cuban government's neglect of its citizens, withdrew its military support in 1958. This withdrawal gave Castro's supporters the opportunity to advance their revolution. On January 1, 1959, the government collapsed: Batista fled to the Dominican Republic, and the then thirty-one-year-old Castro assumed control.

The Castro government's initial priority was addressing the economic chaos that had gripped the country. Castro implemented reforms that placed land and industries, previously privately owned, under government control. Political adversaries were executed or imprisoned, and Cuba was declared a one-party socialist state. Relations with the United States deteriorated throughout 1960 and 1961, as the Cuban government nationalized key industries, including sugar and oil production, seizing American investors' properties. The United States cut diplomatic ties and began devising plans to remove Castro from power. The most notable of these was the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961. Fifteen hundred Cuban exiles, backed by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, departed from Miami to Cuba. They were quickly captured due to inadequate military and tactical support. Soon after, Castro declared himself a Marxist-Leninist and announced a formal alliance with the Soviet Union, the United States' rival during the Cold War.

Since the early 1960s, the relationship between the United States and Cuba has been largely stagnant. Travel between the two nations remains restricted, and a trade embargo is still in place. Over the years, there have been moments that almost disrupted this status quo. In the 1970s, President Jimmy Carter advocated for a more lenient approach, easing the embargo and allowing Cubans access to American products. However, President Ronald Reagan, who succeeded Carter, adopted a strict anti-Communist policy, ensuring continued hostility. After the Soviet Union's collapse in the late 1980s, coinciding with the publication of Hijuelos’s novel, the Cuban economy suffered a severe downturn, leading analysts to predict the fall of the Castro regime. Yet, the economy recovered in the mid-90s. Currently, Castro is in his seventies and his health is deteriorating; he has announced plans for a successor to his nearly fifty-year rule. Meanwhile, Cuban exiles in the United States are anticipating potential political upheaval following his departure.

The Mambo

The mambo emerged in Cuban dance halls in the 1940s, blending the traditional rumba with Afro-Cuban rhythms that were gaining popularity in American jazz at the time. The term “mambo” originates from a Bantu instrument used in religious ceremonies. In the late 1930s, Cuban composer Orestes Lopez created a traditional danzon, or dance song, titled “Mambo,” incorporating elements of the son, a folk music style from Oriente province, which the novel notes as the birthplace of the Castillo brothers and Desi Arnaz. In Lopez’s composition, the orchestra leader would prompt musicians to begin their solos by exclaiming, “Mil veces mambo! (A thousand times mambo!).”

The musical style gained popularity in the United States through the work of the flamboyant bandleader Pérez Prado, who promoted himself as the Mambo King. Prado, who served as a pianist and arranger for the renowned Orquestra Casino de la Playa, left Cuba in 1947. After relocating to Mexico City, he produced a series of recordings that reached the American charts, including “Mambo No. 5” and “Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White.” With his distinctive goatee and showy demeanor, Prado became synonymous with the mambo in the 1950s, even though music historians often downplay his role in the genre's development.

A more enduring impact of mambo music's Americanization is its integration into American jazz. In the 1940s, trumpeter-arranger Mario Bauza introduced jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie to Cuban music. Gillespie, one of the most significant and influential figures in jazz history, is credited with helping to pioneer bebop. His collaboration with Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo in 1947–1948 led to the creation of a musical style known as Afro-Cuban jazz, or sometimes referred to as Cu-bop.

During the early to mid-1950s, mambo music reached its peak of popularity in New York City, especially at the Palladium Ballroom on Broadway, famously known as the "Temple of Mambo." Renowned mambo dancers such as Mambo Aces, "Killer Joe" Piro, Paulito and Lilon, Louie Maquina, and Cuban Pete gained fame there. Many musicians who frequently performed at the Palladium are highlighted in The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, including Tito Puente, Tito Rodriguez, and Machito.

In 1954, the mambo's dominance faced competition from a new dance sensation, the chachacha, which was invented by Cuban violinist Enriqué Jorrin. This dance was simpler, making it more accessible for amateur dancers to learn. The cha-cha was so similar to the mambo that Pérez Prado offered $5000 to anyone who could clearly show how the two musical styles were different. By the 1960s, the chachacha was succeeded by the pachanga and the boogaloo. Over time, music emerging from the Latin scene in New York has been broadly categorized under the term salsa.

Literary Style

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Point of View

The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love is narrated through two perspectives. The first perspective comes from Eugenio, who shares his experiences using the first person, employing "I" and "me." Eugenio narrates both the beginning and end of the book, starting with a childhood memory of his uncle Cesar and concluding with an imaginary scenario where the hearts of the Castillo brothers reunite after death.

The majority of the narrative is seen through Cesar's perspective. These sections are written in the third person, not using Cesar's voice directly but still presenting his experiences as he would perceive them. Through Cesar's view, women are depicted in terms of their sexual qualities, musicians by their skill, and political events by their impact on Cuban farmers. This offers readers a skewed perspective of the world, with only brief glimpses of an unbiased reality. For example, Cesar's daughter Mariela appears to show little interest in him, despite his belief that he is making significant efforts to be a good father. There are instances where Cesar's recollection is questioned, such as when the narrative suggests his first encounter with Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball might not have happened as he remembered.

The book's point of view is inconsistent, often providing information that Cesar wouldn't know. At Nestor's funeral, for example, a lengthy paragraph reveals Dolores' thoughts, set apart in parentheses to signify it is outside the typical narrative flow. However, there are no parentheses around details of Nestor's romance with María, which would be beyond Cesar's knowledge. Information about characters, like Dolores' meeting with the man who organized the beauty pageant and Mrs. Shannon's growing interest in Cesar, is communicated directly to readers, even though Cesar would not have been aware of these aspects.

Structure

The book is divided into five sections. The first and last sections mirror each other: both are brief, under ten pages, and involve Eugenio Castillo discussing significant musicians, one forgotten and the other basking in fame. Between these sections, two parts also balance one another. “In the Hotel Splendour, 1980” and “Sometime Later in the Night in the Hotel Splendour” are referred to as "Side A" and "Side B," akin to an old vinyl record.

The symmetry between the two sets of pairs is disrupted by the addition of a fifth section, titled “Toward the End, While Listening to the Wistful ‘Beautiful María of My Soul.’” This section stands out because it lacks a corresponding section to provide balance, unlike the others. It continues the narrative thread from “Side A” and “Side B,” but adhering to the “record” motif, it cannot be labeled “Side C” since records are flat and do not possess a third side.

In this unbalanced section, Cesar reflects on his physical decline, leading to his decision to drink himself to death and the subsequent execution of that plan. The fact that this section extends beyond the “Side A” and “Side B” framework might suggest that Cesar’s life has surpassed his musical persona, transcending the Mambo King identity he once crafted, and entering the realm of human reality.

Antihero

Castillo is not a character most readers would consider heroic. He spends much of his time drinking, contemplating his sexual prowess, objectifying women, and shirking responsibility. Instead of seizing available opportunities, he indulges in self-pity. At one point in the novel, he recalls raping a woman on Christmas day, confused by her tears because he believes he did her a favor by taking her virginity at age forty: “It was about time for you,” he tells her. He cannot remember her name. He dies at the novel’s conclusion without any regret for his crime. Despite this, many readers find themselves feeling sympathetic toward Cesar. Musicians admire him for his talent, and the novel immerses readers in the world of mambo music. Readers often adopt the values of this niche society over their own real-world values. The novel does not necessarily endorse Cesar’s viewpoint, as seen in the contrasting sections at the beginning and end, where Eugenio deals with a hopeless Cesar and a composed Desi Arnaz. Despite his flaws, the book respects Cesar, acknowledging both his weaknesses and self-destructive nature.

Literary Techniques

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From the very first page, Hijuelos signals to readers that they will need to engage actively to grasp his novel. The novel begins with an epigraph, a meaningful quote from another work that offers significant hints about the upcoming story. This quote seems to originate from the album liner notes of an old record titled The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. Readers may find themselves questioning whether there really was a band named the Mambo Kings, and thus whether the narrative they are about to explore is entirely fictional. Hijuelos blurs the lines between reality and fiction further as the main story begins. Eugenio Castillo eagerly calls his Uncle Cesar to watch an episode of the popular TV show I Love Lucy. We learn that Cesar and Nestor were musicians in a band named "The Mambo Kings," and they performed one of their songs on the show. The motif of a repeatedly aired TV episode, endlessly available in reruns, establishes a central theme of the novel: recurring memories filled with nostalgia for an almost mythical past. As the story unfolds, readers realize that the novel will not progress in a straightforward manner after Hijuelos details how the Castillos met Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball, the stars of I Love Lucy. Hijuelos admits that the meeting might not have occurred as described and then offers a much briefer, more mundane version. This is a pivotal moment in the novel, highlighting the inherently unreliable nature of memory.

The challenge of determining which memories in the novel are reliable remains unresolved. The narrative perspective shifts frequently, framed by Eugenio's first-person narration at the beginning and end. Much of the story seems to reflect Cesar's viewpoint, with occasional insights into Nestor's and Delores's thoughts. Hijuelos's choice not to present the story in chronological order further emphasizes Cesar's confused memories more vividly than a linear recounting would. Ultimately, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love is a psychological novel. The characters' emotional realities hold more significance than uncovering the "truth" of their experiences.

One of the novel's delights is its numerous references to music. Similar to a classic vinyl record, it features a "Side A" and a "Side B," which are the titles of two sections within the book. At one stage, the story halts completely, taken over by "nothing but drums," offering a page-and-a-half description reminiscent of a conga drum solo in a mambo tune. Additionally, just before Cesar and Nestor pass away, Hijuelos employs a fluid stream-of-consciousness style to capture the brothers' thoughts without trying to rationalize them. This technique gives each brother one final moment in the spotlight before their performance concludes. Music is crucial to the Castillo brothers' lives, as it preserves their Cuban heritage in a country where immigrants face pressure to assimilate. The novel's form, shaped by a musical sensibility, further emphasizes the importance of music.

Ideas for Group Discussions

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Conversations about The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love can delve into both contemporary American issues and the novel's artistic structure. One topic worth exploring is the portrayal of the Cuban immigrant experience, especially in comparison to other immigrant groups in the U.S. The way Hijuelos depicts female characters and the dynamics between men and women in the story could also lead to meaningful discussions. Moreover, Oscar Hijuelos has mentioned in interviews that he sees himself more as a New York writer than a Latino author. This distinction could prompt engaging conversations about identity and literary genre. Examining the novel's technical elements and how they convey its themes would be a valuable area of study.

1. In what ways does The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love compare to and contrast with the works of other Cuban American authors who were publishing around the same time as Hijuelos, like Roberto Fernandez, Cristina Garcia, and Elias Miguel Munoz?

2. How would you define the difference between an exile and an immigrant? How does the experience of being an exile differ from that of an immigrant? Which characters in the story would you classify as exiles, and which as immigrants?

3. Does the Castillo family's "melancholy," as described by the narrator, genuinely run in the family, or is it more of a response to the circumstances faced by Cesar and Nestor?

4. Are there other reasons besides Nestor's fixation on Beautiful Maria that contribute to his unhappiness?

5. Are any of the women in the novel depicted as strong? Are they portrayed in a sympathetic manner?

6. Why are Cesar and Nestor unable to find fulfillment in family life, unlike characters such as their cousin Pablo and Julian Garcia, a musician in Cuba?

7. Is it possible for artists or musicians to maintain a stable domestic life, or does creating exceptional art or music require them to remain emotionally detached from others?

8. What representations of masculinity are present in the novel? Are any of these depictions more appealing than others?

9. Why do you think Hijuelos chose to include real-life figures like Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball instead of solely fictional characters?

Social Concerns

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In 1990, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, marking the first time a Latino writer received this honor. This recognition indicated that Latino fiction had become an integral part of American literature rather than being seen as peripheral. One of Hijuelos's notable accomplishments in the novel is his exploration of themes that resonate with both the broader American and specific Cuban American experiences. The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love offers insightful commentary on the American Dream, gender roles and relationships, the immigrant journey, and nostalgia for Cuba.

The story follows Cesar and Nestor Castillo, two brothers from Oriente Province, Cuba, who arrive in New York City in 1949. They aim to leave their pasts behind and pursue new career opportunities within the vibrant Latin music scene in New York, represented by legendary musicians such as Xavier Cugat, Machito (known as "The Mambo King"), and Tito Puente. By day, the brothers work in a meatpacking factory, while at night, they perform Cuban mambos, boleros, and rumbas. Their big break comes when Cuban musician and actor Desi Arnaz invites them to perform on his television show, I Love Lucy, which leads to increased record sales and more club appearances.

At first glance, it might seem that the Castillo brothers are living the classic American Dream, where immigrants come to the U.S., start with low-paying jobs, and eventually, through diligence and perseverance, secure better positions and financial stability. In this narrative, America is seen as the "land of opportunity" where immigrants can climb the socio-economic ladder through hard work. However, Hijuelos challenges this notion. The opportunities the brothers find come with significant costs. Cesar forms a Cuban orchestra, the Mambo Kings, but soon discovers the nightclub industry is unfairly biased against musicians. He refuses to sign exclusive contracts with club owners, which are typically advantageous to the owners. Consequently, the band must constantly search for gigs, and sometimes Cesar and his musicians are swindled by promoters who "forget" to pay them. Additionally, while the Mambo Kings release several records, Latin music is categorized as a niche market, limiting their record sales to just a few thousand copies.

Hijuelos further critiques the American Dream of economic success when Cesar launches the Club Havana, a small venue offering traditional Cuban music and cuisine. Initially, the venture goes well until Fernando Perez, Cesar's business partner, takes control of the club and turns it into a drug operation. The community turns against Cesar when their children start using Perez's drugs, forcing Cesar to relinquish the club to Perez. Hijuelos suggests that the esteemed American ideal of achieving success through hard work can be corrupted by a more sinister belief that financial success should be pursued at any cost.

While the tale of Club Havana reveals the grim aspects of American success myths, Hijuelos also finds amusement in these narratives. He humorously critiques American success manuals, which have been popular in the U.S. since the early 1800s. These manuals claim that readers can rise in social status by studying and applying general principles that often seem absurdly simplistic. Throughout many scenes in the novel, Nestor reads a comical self-help book titled Forward America! This well-worn paperback urges its readers to be confident and become "men of the future," in order to gain "respect and love of others ... the American Way!" Despite Nestor's earnest attempts to embrace this mindset, he gradually descends into despair, culminating in his death at 31 in a car crash. Nestor cannot transform into this new future-oriented man because he is too preoccupied with what he left behind in Cuba. There, he was in love with Maria Rivera, a captivating dancer who married someone else. Nestor's fixation on Maria continues after he moves to the United States, causing tension with his wife, Delores. It's not surprising, given that Nestor writes Maria heartfelt letters and spends months crafting a sorrowful song about her, "Bellisima Maria de mi Alma" ("Beautiful Maria of My Soul"). Ironically, the song that causes Nestor so much emotional turmoil becomes the Mambo Kings' biggest hit after catching Desi Arnaz's attention.

Critics have noted that Nestor's deep longing for Maria mirrors the yearning many exiled Cubans feel for their homeland. After Fidel Castro's rise to power in the 1959 Cuban Revolution, Cubans who emigrated to the United States became exiles. They could no longer return to Cuba, which had turned Communist. For many in this exile community, Cuba became a potent symbol of a lost way of life and a focal point for heated political debates that divided Cuban communities in the U.S. throughout the rest of the 20th century.

Nostalgia for an irretrievable golden past is a hallmark of exile literature, a category that includes many Cuban American novels, especially those written before 1990. Although The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love is deeply rooted in traditional American themes and is not a pure exile novel, Hijuelos draws from the genre. He portrays first Nestor and then, after Nestor's death, Cesar, as men "plagued by memory." Just as Nestor becomes increasingly sorrowful and distracted by his longing for the unreachable Maria, Cesar's enduring grief over his deceased brother leads him into depression. Cesar attempts to numb his pain with alcohol and frantic sexual encounters. Significantly, he abandons music, his creative outlet, during his darkest times.

The Castillo brothers' futile attempt to break free from their past challenges a classic American myth: the idea that the past can be left behind. Hijuelos explores this theme not only through the storyline but also through the narrative structure of the novel. The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love shifts back and forth in time and location, from 1920s Cuba to New York in the 1980s. The plot unfolds in a non-linear fashion, mirroring Cesar's memory, which is described as "scrambled like eggs," with events mixed together. This creates a perpetual present where all events coexist, akin to exiles who blend nostalgic memories of the past with their current reality. Yet, Cesar is aware that these people and places now exist solely in his mind, not in reality. As he tells Lydia Santos, his last girlfriend, "See, the worst part of it is that things don't exist any more." While he speaks of Cuba, he could equally be talking about the close-knit New York Cuban community that has also faded over time, or any of his recollections of past people and places. Exiles are not unique in their inability to revisit the past. In a broader sense, time turns everyone into exiles, as the past is a destination none can return to. However, Hijuelos suggests that memory can be especially crippling for exiles. Even though the past no longer physically exists, it can still imprison exiles in their former national identities, despite their desire to become "men of the future." "Look, brother, there goes the future," Cesar quips to Nestor as they pass a cemetery. For Cesar and Nestor, time primarily looks backward. They are unable to reinvent themselves as men without a burdensome history.

Compare and Contrast

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1950s: During this decade, Cuba is a favored vacation destination for American tourists, who benefit from the strong U.S. dollar and a foreign government that is welcoming toward U.S. businesses.

1980s: Cuba aligns itself with the Soviet Union, a communist superpower that is in opposition to the United States. American citizens are prohibited from traveling to Cuba or conducting business there.

Today: Despite the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991, Cuba remains a communist nation, and the U.S. maintains its travel and trade embargo against the country.

1950s: America experiences a Mambo craze, with even mainstream orchestras incorporating Latin-influenced pieces into their repertoires.

1980s: The United States sees the rise of alternative music, which begins to replace genres like Mambo. Mambo music and dance are seen as relics of simpler times and are viewed as outdated.

Today: Mambo music is taken seriously by jazz musicians. Older mainstream Latin acts, such as Pérez Prado and Xavier Cugat, gain appreciation from younger audiences as kitsch or "lounge music."

1950s: Going out to dance to live music is a common way to spend an evening.

1980s: The significance of live music declines as dance clubs increasingly rely on recordings, featuring live bands only on special occasions.

Today: Disc jockeys rise to prominence as major entertainment figures based on how they creatively mix recorded tracks.

1950s: New York City is recognized as a mosaic of ethnic neighborhoods, each reflecting the immigrant communities that settled there.

1980s: New York City is largely perceived as an exciting yet dangerous place, with rampant street crime.

Today: While retaining elements from its past, New York City's global reputation is largely shaped by the resilience and unity displayed after the 2001 World Trade Center attacks.

Literary Precedents

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The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love has strong connections to early 20th-century American novels that explore the immigrant experience, such as Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (1906) and Abraham Cahan's The Rise of David Levinsky (1917). These older novels detail immigrants' efforts to climb the economic ladder and examine the costs associated with achieving financial success. However, the world that Hijuelos portrays is not as harsh as the worlds depicted by Sinclair and Cahan. This is evident in a scene from The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love that closely resembles The Jungle. Upon arriving in the United States, Nestor and Cesar find employment in a meatpacking plant, similar to many characters in The Jungle. In Sinclair's depiction, the meatpacking plant is a place of horror, where a moment's inattention can lead to injury or death, and readers are shocked by the revelations of what ends up in the sausage vats. In contrast, The Mambo Kings shows Nestor absent-mindedly creating his ballad of lost love while working near the sausage grinder, unconcerned about his safety, which he assumes is guaranteed. The difference between these scenes arises from a shift in focus. Sinclair aimed to highlight the need for improved working conditions for immigrants by dramatizing the most severe physical threats they faced. Hijuelos, however, writes about a world where the challenges immigrants face are more psychological, as they may struggle to mentally adjust to their new environment.

Classic autobiographies recounting the immigrant experience in the United States also offer valuable comparisons with The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. For instance, Mary Antin's The Promised Land (1912) addresses Americanization and assimilation more directly than Hijuelos's novel and could help students explore these critical topics.

Adaptations

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The film adaptation of the novel, titled The Mambo Kings, was released in theaters in 1992. The screenplay was crafted by Cynthia Cidre and the film was directed by Arne Glimcher. It significantly diverges from Hijuelos's original work. Notably, the film omits Eugenio's narration as a framing element and does not shift between Cesar's past memories. Instead, it presents the novel's primary storylines in chronological sequence, incorporating notable changes in character portrayal and events. Cesar is depicted as less of a womanizer, and his descent into alcoholism following Nestor's death is minimized. Additionally, Nestor is portrayed as a less sympathetic figure. A plot twist not found in the novel involves Nestor secretly plotting with Fernando Perez to leave the Mambo Kings and launch a solo singing career. When Nestor attempts to back out, Perez threatens to ensure the Mambo Kings will never find work as musicians again. This development leads to Nestor's overwhelming guilt, driving him to crash Cesar's cherished DeSoto car fatally. Conversely, in the novel, it is Nestor's deepening depression that leads to the accident. The film concludes with a remorseful Cesar opening the Club Havana in New York, singing "Beautiful Maria of My Soul" while sorrowfully recalling his brother. Moreover, the film suggests a possible future romance between Cesar and Delores. These alterations render the movie more sensational and less engaging than the novel. Without the book's fragmented, nostalgia-soaked narrative style, the exploration of memory and exile remains unexamined.

Another notable change in the film is its version of the song "Beautiful Maria of My Soul," which departs from Hijuelos's novel. In the book, the song's lyrics depict a tormented lover lamenting the mistreatment by the woman he loves. In contrast, the movie alters the lyrics, transforming the lover's agony into mere nostalgia. Rather than a traditional Cuban lament, the song becomes a richly romantic reflection on past passion. This new rendition was recorded by both actor Antonio Banderas, who portrayed Nestor in the film, and the band Los Lobos. It's evident that commercial motives influenced this change, as the film's version of the song is more emotionally uplifting and thus more likely to achieve mainstream success.

An abridged version of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love was also released on cassette by Dove Audio in 1991, with the novel being read by actor E. G. Marshall.

Media Adaptations

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The novel was transformed into a film in 1992, featuring Armand Assante and Antonio Banderas as the Castillo brothers. The movie was directed by Arne Glimcher, produced by Warner Brothers, and is accessible on videocassette through Warner Home Video.

An audio version of the book was narrated by E. B. Marshall and released by NewStar Media in 1991.

While many movie soundtracks rarely reflect the novels they are based on, the soundtrack for The Mambo Kings vividly captures the music integral to the book. It includes tracks by iconic musicians like Tito Puente and Celia Cruz, along with pieces by modern Cuban artists such as Arturo Sandoval. The album features two renditions of the Mambo Kings’ iconic song “Beautiful María of My Soul”: one in English by Los Lobos and another in Spanish by Antonio Banderas, one of the film’s stars. It is available in both cassette and compact disc formats from Elektra.

Bibliography and Further Reading

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Sources

Birkerts, Sven, “The Haunted House,” in the New Republic, March 22, 1993, pp. 38–41.

Hornby, Nick, “Cuban Heels,” in the Listener, Vol. 123, No. 3158, March 29, 1990, p. 33.

Jefferson, Margo, “Dancing into the Dream,” in the New York Times Book Review, August 27, 1989, pp. 1, 30.

Kanellos, Nicholas, Review of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, in the Americas Review, Vol. XVIII, No. 1, Spring 1990, pp. 113–14.

McGuigan, Cathleen, “Fascinatin’ Rhythm,” in Newsweek, August 21, 1989, p. 60. Sheppard, R. Z., “Hail Cesar,” in Time, August 14, 1989, p. 68.

Further Reading

Carpentier, Alejo, Music in Cuba, University of Minnesota Press, 2001. Originally published in 1946, before the timeframe of the novel, Carpentier's exploration of Cuban music's origins illustrates the fusion of West Indian, European, and African elements. His writing, while scholarly, remains accessible to a general audience.

Salazar, Max, Mambo Kingdom: Latin Music in New York, Omnibus Press, 2002. Esteemed historian Salazar delves into the pivotal role of New York's music scene in merging European and Latin musical traditions in this insightful book.

Suchlicki, Jaime, Cuba: From Columbus to Castro and Beyond, 4th ed., Brasseys Inc., 1997. Offering one of the most comprehensive examinations of Cuban history by an American author, this study has been updated to incorporate developments in the post-Soviet era.

Sweeney, Philip, The Rough Guide to Cuban Music, Rough Guides, Inc., 2001. This comprehensive guide tracks the evolution of Cuban music, featuring hundreds of concise biographies of musicians who have achieved international acclaim.

Yanow, Scott, Afro-Cuban Jazz: Third Ear–The Essential Listening Companion, Backbeat Books, 2000. This book explores the early 20th-century connections between American jazz and Cuban music. Part of the “Third Ear” series, it provides a well-regarded overview with recommendations for key recordings.

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