Dreaming in Cuban (29 page)

SB
: You write a lot about santería. Why is that?

CG
: Santería was traditionally an unacknowledged and underappreciated aspect of what it meant to be Cuban. Yet the syncretism between the Yoruban religion that the slaves brought to the island and the Catholicism of their masters is, in my opinion, the underpinning of Cuban culture. Every artistic realm—music, theater, literature, etc.—owes a huge debt to santería and the slaves who practiced it and passed it on, largely secretively, for generations.

SB
: Did you consider yourself an exile?

CG
: I feel like I grew up in the wake of my parents’ exile rather than enduring the loss directly. But while I don’t consider myself an exile, I’ve had the privilege of experiencing two cultures at very close range, participating in both and belonging to neither entirely. Compounding this is the sense of voluntary exile I have as a writer, of stepping outside the stream of everyday life to try and make sense of it. This is the greatest luxury of this peculiar exile.

SB
: What role does memory play in the novel?

CG
: Memory is more a point of departure than a repository of facts. It’s a product of both necessity and imagination, of my characters’ needs to reinvent themselves and invest themselves in narratives of their own devising. Each of them needs to be a heroine, to believe she is doing the right thing, choosing the only path to a kind of personal redemption. They need their memories in this sense to survive.

SB
: It’s been more than a decade since
Dreaming in Cuban
was published. How do you regard it now?

CG
: With a bittersweet nostalgia. I gave birth to the book—my first novel—and my daughter in the same year and they both changed my life irrevocably for the better.

SB
: Lastly, whose story do you see
Dreaming in Cuban
as being?

CG
: Personally, I see Celia and Pilar as foreground characters and Felicia and Lourdes as more background characters. But each in her own way is telling an essential part of the story. None can exist without the others.

1. What is the nature of Celia’s devotion to the revolution? Why is she such a true believer in it?

2. Why does Celia continue to write Gustavo? What does he represent to her? What purposes do her letters serve in the novel?

3. Why does Jorge come back to visit Celia? Why did he lie about Celia to Lourdes, and why is it important for him to tell her what he’s done?

4. Though the events of modern-day Cuba are woven throughout the novel, Garcia never refers to Fidel Castro by name, only as El Lider. Why does she do this and what does this bring to the novel?

5. Why does Lourdes defend her daughter after Pilar unveils the punk Statue of Liberty painting?

6. This novel is told from several different perspectives over three generations. What does this technique lend to the novel?

7. The themes of magic and faith are predominant throughout the novel. How do the novel’s characters view magic and faith, and how do they use these qualities in their daily lives?

8. All of the characters seem to be searching to fulfill unnamed desires. Can you identify what each of them want? Does regret play any part in their actions?

9. Garcia writes, “The family is hostile to the individual.” Discuss how this applies to the novel’s characters.

10. How are the many intersections of race and class depicted in the novel?

11. By the novel’s end, all of Celia’s children are lost to her, either by death or estrangement. This is echoed by the troubled relationship between Pilar and Lourdes, the twins’ relationship with Felicia, and the final spiriting away of Ivanito. What is Garcia trying to show here, and why?

12. The final portion of the book, in which Lourdes and Pilar travel to Cuba, is titled “The Languages Lost.” What do you think this means? How do you interpret the other passage headings?

13. What is Pilar searching for in her relationship with her grandmother? Does she find it?

14. What is Celia’s legacy to Pilar?

15. Why does Pilar lie to Celia at the end? How is the theme of betrayal handled throughout the novel?

16. What is it that drives Celia into the sea at the end? Is it Ivanito’s disappearance or Pilar’s lying to her or something else?

17. What does the title of the book signify? Who is “dreaming,” so to speak? Do you think Garcia is referring to a specific character or is it a collective dreaming?

A
BOUT THE
A
UTHOR

Cristina García was born in Havana and grew up in New York City. She is the author of
Dreaming in Cuban
, which was nominated for a National Book Award, and
The Agüero Sisters
, and
Monkey Hunting
. Both novels have been widely translated. Ms. Garcia has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University, and the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award. She lives in California with her daughter, Pilar.