The Creative Writing’s Role in the Formation of a New Linguistic Home in Exile: A Critical Stylistic Analysis of Christina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban (1990)

This paper depicts how exiles are psychologically damaged by language loss and how the latter engenders identity crises that affect the characters and destabilize their identity constructs. Linguistically speaking, although expatriates living outside their home countries master English more than their native words, they can circulate both locations comfortably. However, both languages fail to provide them with an efficient means of expressing their identity. The main question raised is whether language contributes to the understanding of the self or complicates the maturation process and engenders an identity crisis. It is for this particular reason that the researcher has chosen Cristina Garcia Dreaming in Cuban (1990) to portray how both languages are simultaneously used, creating a third language structure, this narrative that blends English with Spanish without making the reader notice the shift and enabling both the writer and the protagonist to express their bicultural identities. The aim of the current study is to investigate how linguistic meaning is used as a vehicle for constructing identity through a critical stylistic analysis of Christina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban (1990). The study concludes that this novel cannot be classified as either nostalgic or creative, but blends nostalgia with creativity so as to give birth to a new category of exile writing. The latter preaches hybridity as a remedial reconciliation capable of healing the emotional shock caused by exile.

Political Families: Narration, Memory and Healing in Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban

The paper interprets Cristina García’s novel Dreaming in Cuban against the backdrop of contemporary multicultural identity prose by women. Against expectations about the possibility of healing and belonging in the feminine diasporic text, the novel problematizes the possibility and costs of healing, reconnecting, and reconciliation. The text represents how profoundly political and family history are interconnected on an individual level, and how the intersection of family, politics, and individual limits the scope of change for the protagonist.

Writing Conflict to End Conflict: Reconciliatory Writing in Cristina García’s "Dreaming in Cuban," "The Agüero Sisters," and "King of Cuba"

The building of bridges between Cuba and the US has been ongoing for a long time, not least by artists. Reconciliation work preceding the commencement of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the US encompasses, for example, novelist Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban (1992), The Agüero Sisters (1997), and King of Cuba (2013). I argue that these novels take on the task of lessening polarizations with the aspiration of furthering reconciliation processes through concentrating on the divisiveness between families and politics within the Cuban communities, focusing on the island Cubans and the US Cuban diaspora. García writes conflict to end conflict and this is, I claim, her strongest contribution to the reconciliation processes. In the last part of the article I briefly discuss how I use the concept of translation to theorize the relationship between fiction and reality.

Lengua(je)s, branding, e identidad en la Gran Cuba: Dreaming in Cuban de Cristina García

Las metáforas conceptuales de puentes, fronteras, y otros espacios intermedios –las cuales forman lo que podríamos denominar ‘la ontología del guion’—prevalecen en las lecturas críticas de la producción artística de las hijas de la diáspora caribeña hispanófona en los EEUU. No obstante, en este artículo sostengo que las formas lingüísticas y los patrones discursivos que tienen lugar con frecuencia en estos textos no sugieren una carga de identidad lingüística ni el estado de hallarse entre lenguas y naciones, sino que crean una estética de la multiplicidad. A pesar de estar escritas mayoritariamente en inglés, estas obras se agrupan con una tradición literaria del Caribe hispanófono que cuestiona nociones estructuralistas de lengua e identidad, y perspectivas modernas de nación(alidad). En este artículo, expongo la necesidad de reconsiderar las conceptualizaciones de lengua y género en las construcciones de identidades locales, globales, y posnacionales en la Gran Cuba. Analizo cómo escritoras como Cristina García (y Achy Obejas, entre otras) reinterpretan la lengua a través de cruce lingüísticos, formando así una comunidad grancaribeña de práctica literaria que cuestiona los límites discursivos de las definiciones tradicionales de ‘lo americano’, ‘lo cubano’, ‘lo caribeño’, y lo cubano-americano’. Por medio de su branding lingüístico y sus componentes temáticos, estas novelas desestabilizan los imaginarios nacionales y archivos culturales predominantes tanto en la isla caribeña como en los EEUU, a la vez que problematizan el rol históricamente silenciado de las mujeres (escritoras), con un claro propósito de adquisición de poder.