Dreaming in Cuban

This theme remains the most overt and important idea in the text, unifying the author’s study of the disparate experiences and individual voices that dominate Dreaming in Cuban and Cristina García’s other novels. The thematic importance of Immigration, Exile, and Cuban Identity is evident in the narrative’s historical grounding, in its characterization, and its setting. García brackets her text with two of the most important mass-immigrations in Cuban history: Cuba’s 1959 Revolution and the Mariel Boatlift in 1980. Part of Fidel Castro’s set of socialist reforms included the governmental seizure of private property, particularly the sprawling network of fincas (large farms and plantations) that benefited foreign and foreign-affiliated owners while doing nothing to increase the standard of living for everyday Cubans. The characters of Rufino and Lourdes thus become caught up in this process, and it is the appropriation of Rufino’s family finca and Lourdes’s rape at the hands of the soldiers that fuels the pair’s decision to immigrate to the United States with their daughter Pilar. Cuba’s Revolution was a time of violent upheaval, and it prompted a massive exodus from the island. Among this first wave of émigrés were many wealthy Cubans, those who had been part of Batista’s inner circle, and others with ties to the United States. Lourdes and Rufino are therefore representative of this early group of exiles, and they are recognizable as such, particularly to Cuban readers.

Although there was also emigration from Cuba in the years that followed the revolution, Castro made it very difficult to leave, and the next mass exodus did not occur until 1980. The depiction of the storming of the Peruvian embassy that is one of the narrative’s last main events is historically accurate. It led to Castro giving official permission for many Cubans to leave the island. They had to find their own means of transportation, and many Cuban émigrés already established in the United States paid for their family members to be transported to Miami or the Florida Keys. The United States altered its immigration quotas and set up welcome centers to process the arrivals. Castro also infamously “emptied his prisons” and sent a host of prisoners, many of them political, and many requiring mental health services, along with the Cubans who were on their way to join family in the United States. This event would become known as the Mariel Boatlift, and García only refrains from labelling it as such because she depicts the exodus in its infancy, before it was given a semi-official name. That García both begins and ends her story with events so integral to the history of the Cuban diaspora is representative of the stakes of immigration and exile.

Within this broader historical context, each of the women in Celia’s family struggles with self-understanding and identity development. García has noted many times that there is no singular “immigrant experience” and that the lives of immigrants are not monolithic. Celia, Lourdes, Felicia, and Pilar, although not all immigrants, come from a family that has been deeply ruptured by immigration and exile, and each woman must therefore develop her own unique way of integrating her Cuban identity into her sense of self. Accordingly, each woman locates her “Cubanidad” in a different place. For Celia, being Cuban means embracing the revolution and immersing herself fully in the cult of personality of El Líder. For Lourdes, Cuban identity is pushed to the side in favor of American identity, and although she is staunchly pro-America, the pain of exile becomes a hidden, private wound, for she had more status in Cuba and was treated better there. Although she does prefer life in America, there are aspects of living in Cuba that she still misses. Her primary connection to Cuba is her relationship with her father, although he too is more interested in his American identity than his Cuban roots.

For Felicia, Cuban identity is found within the world of Santería and her devotion to the Orishas. Pilar also struggles to find her Cuban identity, noting at one point, “Most days Cuba is kind of dead to me. But every once in a while a wave of longing will hit me and it’s all I can do not to hijack a plane to Havana or something” (137-38). Like Felicia, she finds her connection to Cuba within the Afro-Caribbean traditions of Santería. Catholicism, atheism, Santería, and communism are all distinct but interwoven parts of Cuban history. In locating Cuban identity in all of these various pieces of Cuban culture, García shows her readers that Cuban identity is not a monolith, and she also pays homage to an island, claiming it as her own by outlining its long, rich, and storied history. For some members of the Cuban diaspora, being Cuban means retaining connections to the Afro-Caribbean traditions that are still practiced on the island. For others, it means maintaining a fierce devotion to the equalizing project of communism. For others still, it means enduring the pain of failed political promises and exile. Ultimately, García implies that each of these ways of identifying is equally “Cuban.”

Setting is also an important aspect of this theme. The novel is set in primarily in Cuba, Miami, and New York City, and these three locations are prominent settings within the Cuban diaspora. Miami-Dade county is home to the largest population of Cuban exiles and Cuban Americans in the country, and there is a substantial community of such émigrés and their descendants in New York City as well. Miami is too hot and its culture too Cuban for Lourdes; she wants to travel further north and experience real winter so that she can feel as though she has truly left Cuba behind. The area of New York City that they settle in is itself a complex tapestry of migration; their neighborhood in Brooklyn was primarily Jewish until waves of immigrants from the Caribbean began to settle there. The state of flux that their neighborhood experiences highlights the nature of migration itself, for the ever-shifting groups moving in and out of Brooklyn are emblematic of the overlapping waves of migration that have shaped American culture throughout its history. The space of Cuba also figures prominently and speaks to the differing ways that each character identifies with their sense of Cuban identity. Celia is deeply devoted to her country, and for her, post-revolutionary Cuba offers more equality and opportunity than it did in the past. But for Lourdes, who finds her identity largely by rejecting all things Cuban, the country represents the failed promises of equality and opportunity. Whereas Celia still sees a revolutionary project unfolding, Lourdes sees food shortages, political repression, and families torn apart by clashing ideologies.