Dreaming In Cuban

2 Pages 559 Words

Garcia’s novel, Dreaming in Cuban, looks at the history of Cuba through the everyday events of four women of different generations and schools of thought. The focal point of this family of four women lies on Celia del Pino, the matriarchal figure. Lourdes is Celia’s oldest daughter, who was born in Cuba in 1936. Felicia is the second child. Luz and Milagro are Felicia’s twins who reject their mother. Ivanito on the other hand is Felicia’s youngest son and is incredibly loyal to his mother, until his aunt Lourdes and Pilar go back to Cuba to visit and send him off to America. The experience of the Latin emigré is best explored through Garcia’s character, Pilar. Pilar left Cuba at the age of two yet claims to remember everything clearly. The reader is introduced to Pilar when she catches her father cheating on her mother with some blond at a store. She is infuriated by this and is determined to go “back to Cuba” because she is sick of seeing everything around her. She envisions her reunion with her grandmother who, in Pilar’s imagination, will be rocking on a chair, looking out toward the ocean, and will smell of salt and violet. She then continues to remember the following:
“ I was only two years old when I left Cuba but I remember everything that’s happened to me since I was a
baby, even word-for word conversations. I was sitting in my grandmothers’ lap, playing with her drop pearl
earrings, when my mother told her we were leaving the country. Abuela Celia called her a traitor to the
revolution. Mom tried to pull me away but I clung to Abuela and screamed at the top of my lungs. My
grandfather came running and said ‘Celia let the girl go. She belongs with Lourdes.’ That was the last time I
saw her.”
Pilar also talks to her grandmother in her sleep. They write to each other from time to time, but tend to communicate more through their sleep. Pi...