Cristina Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban Essay

One of the many questions brought up while reading this book was the relationship between Celia and her

My cultural ancestry comes from a Cuban and Mexican decent. I have chosen to write about my Cuban side because I can relate to them more than I could with my Mexican side. I was raised around my Cuban family and would occasionally see my Mexican side due to them living so far away. I have spent a lot more time associating with Cubans and have adapted to more of their habits.

The story begins with a recounting of the story of Tatica, Reyita’s grandmother, and her trial of being abducted from her native Africa and brought to Cuba to be sold into slavery. Tatica’s story sets a precedent that is upheld by the next generations of her family of racial discrimination, struggle for survival and equality, and political activism. Reyita explains that her grandmother’s love of Africa instilled in Reyita a

Castro focus revolves around the idea of allowing an individual to express their ideas regardless of their gender. She achieves this by narrating her own story of how she arrived at college “hungry”, with the desire to learn and being able to express those ideas that as a kid she wasn’t able to as the result of her parents strict parenting. One example is when Castro describes how her mother’s vision of her is her getting married and not pursuing higher education. In this example, Castro tries to urge the need for freedom of expression by bringing up how in that time most women wore destined to get married and be a house wife. She reinforces such notion by establishing that by graduation time,

The novel How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, by Julia Alvarez, illustrates these challenges. Throughout the novel, we see how different aspects of culture shock impact the Garcia family. In this essay I will discuss how particular events change each family member’s Dominican cultural values and identity.

You can see how Maria’s El Salvador is empty of people, full only of romantic ideas. Jose Luis’s image of El Salvador, in contrast, totally invokes manufactured weapons; violence. Maria’s “self-projection elides Jose Luis’s difference” and illustrates “how easy it is for the North American characters, including the big-hearted María, to consume a sensationalized, romanticized, or demonized version of the Salvadoran or Chicana in their midst” (Lomas 2006, 361). Marta Caminero-Santangelo writes: “The main thrust of the narrative of Mother Tongue ... continually ... destabilize[s] the grounds for ... a fantasy of connectedness by emphasizing the ways in which [Maria’s] experience as a Mexican American and José Luis’s experiences as a Salvadoran have created fundamentally different subjects” (Caminero-Santangelo 2001, 198). Similarly, Dalia Kandiyoti points out how Maria’s interactions with José Luis present her false assumptions concerning the supposed “seamlessness of the Latino-Latin American connection” (Kandiyoti 2004, 422). So the continual misinterpretations of José Luis and who he really is and has been through on Maria’s part really show how very far away her experiences as a middle-class, U.S.-born Chicana are from those of her Salvadoran lover. This tension and resistance continues throughout their relationship.

One of the main sources of tension in How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents, written by Julia Alvarez, are the sisters search for a personal identity among contrasting cultures. Many of the characters felt pressure from two sources, the patriarchal culture that promotes traditional gender roles and society of nineteen-sixties and seventies America. Dominican tradition heavily enforces the patriarchal family and leaves little room for female empowerment or individuality, whereas in the United States, the sixties and seventies were times of increasingly liberal views and a rise in feminist ideals. This conflict shaped the identities of the characters in Alvarez’s novel and often tore the characters apart for one another.

Cristina Henriquez’, The Book of Unknown Americans, folows the story of a family of immigants adjusting to their new life in the United States of America. The Rivera family finds themselves living within a comunity of other immigrants from all over South America also hoping to find a better life in a new country. This book explores the hardships and injustices each character faces while in their home country as well as withina foreign one, the United States. Themes of community, identity, globalization, and migration are prevalent throughout the book, but one that stood out most was belonging. In each chacters viewpoint, Henriquez explores their feelings of the yearning they have to belong in a community so different than the one that they are used to.

The priest, Father Jerome, depicts the hypocrisy of the male-gendered system of belief. He asks, “Is this an act of God or of Satan that brings you back to us, that has flown you up to the roof like a bird? Are you the devil’s messenger or a winged angel?” (23) The suggestion that her daughter is evil angers Sofi so badly that she rids herself of the shock of seeing her child return to life. Angrily, she berates the priest, but is scolded by the other women who are in attendance. It is in this scene that the male-centered views are combatted and female-healer centered views are promoted. What I mean is; the hypocrisy of the priest rests in the idea that something is evil if it goes against what is taught and what has been taught. The priest, in an attempt to get La Loca down from the roof, tells her they will go in and pray for her, since maybe she did die and see God. From his viewpoint, she could not have been sent back to act as a messiah-like being, because it is not written that Jesus will come back as a little girl and, there is no talk of

As children grow up in a dysfunctional family, they experience trauma and pain from their parent’s actions, words, and attitudes. With this trauma experienced, they grew up changed; different from other children. The parent’s behavior affects them and whether they like it or not, sometimes it can influence them, and they can react against it or can repeat it. In Junot Díaz’s “Fiesta, 1980”, is presented this theme of the dysfunctional family. The author presents a story of an adolescent Latin boy called Junior, who narrates the chronicles of his dysfunctional family, a family of immigrants from the Dominican Republic driving to a party in the Bronx, New York City. “Papi had been with

One thing all human beings, have in common is the struggle for self identity. Children are raised by parents or guardians who have struggled and fought for their own identities. In many cases, parents are still trying to figure it out, while raising their own children. Such is the case with the characters in Junot Diaz’s, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. The theme of identity is conveyed through the characters’ Dominican culture, social standing, and in finding love. Oscar, Lola, and Yunior are three central characters in Oscar Wao, who’s Dominican cultural and family expectations were major obstacles as they struggled to establish their identity.

First of all, the setting of this novel contributes to the Rivera family’s overall perception of what it means to be an American. To start this off, the author chooses a small American city where groups of Latino immigrants with their own language and traditions, lived together in the same apartment building. All these immigrants experienced similar problems since they moved from their countries. For example, in the novel after every other chapter the author

The Language of Dreams by Belle Yang features the role of memory, language and story-telling in human lives, especially those displayed and complicated by the movement and the blending of culture (pp 697) whereas, Death of Josseline by Margaret Regan encourages a reconsideration of how the immigration issue is discussed in the media (pp704). Both the article describes about change in one’s life because of immigration.

Pilar?s ability to communicate with her grandmother is another example of the supernatural forces the run beneath the surface of this novel. Throughout the book Celia speaks of her ability to communicate with Pilar. ?She speaks to her granddaughter, imagines her words as slivers of light piercing the murky night? (7). Celia uses this form of communication not only as a way to learn more about Pilar and her life in the United States but as an intimate tool to share the del Pino family history. Pilar also acknowledges the power of this form of contact ?Abuela Celia and I write to each other sometimes, but mostly I hear her speaking to me at night just before I fall asleep. She tells me stories about her life?she tells me she loves me? (29).

Having that one scared in your life that you have to survive and don’t have nobody to ask for help and how you have to rescue yourself.” Dad didn’t come home today. He was due this morning. I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what to think. I’m scared to death.” (152) what lourdes the character is explained in this quote that she don’t have nobody to talk or somebody to she can feel saved and the only person she had was not at that time when she was terrified by the things that were happening at that time because she was really scared and traumatized for see that our community were killing each others for survive. “ Last night, when I escaped from the neighborhood, it was burning. The