Dreaming in Cuban

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1992

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-4

Part 1, Chapters 5-7

Part 2

Part 3

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Celia’s Drop Pearl Earrings

Celia’s drop pearl earrings are a gift from her Spanish lover, Gustavo. They are a symbol of her unrequited love and of her unwillingness to let go of Gustavo’s memory. Cristina García establishes the symbolic importance of the earrings in the very first lines of the novel, for Celia sits on her wicker swing, wearing the drop pearl earrings, and watches the coastline for evidence of advancing American ships or airplanes. This is only the first of many such descriptions of Celia, and multiple characters observe her wearing them. They are featured in one of Pilar’s first memories of her early life in Cuba, and Celia wears the earrings when Pilar and Lourdes return many years later. Celia’s inability to completely move on from her ill-fated relationship with Gustavo has a ripple effect on her marriage and her parenting, and therefore the earrings also speak to the theme of Fraught Family Bonds. Celia does agree to marry Jorge, but her love for him never equals her lingering love for Gustavo. It is at the root of her mental health condition, and it is part of the reason for Jorge’s decision to commit her to a psychiatric institution. Jorge and Lourdes develop a closer bond than Celia and Lourdes do because Celia spends Lourdes’s first year in an “asylum,” but also because Celia remains focused on Gustavo even after she returns home. She is never fully invested in parenting her children. She will keep the earrings on until the very last lines of the novel, and the author implies that the act of removing the earrings is a signal that Celia has finally let go of Gustavo.

Yankee Doodle Bakery

Lourdes’s Brooklyn bakery, named “Yankee Doodle Bakery” is a symbol of her patriotism and her anti-communist political orientation. Lourdes shares her pro-America stance with her father, and it is a source of division within the family because Celia and Javier are fiercely devoted to socialism and to El Líder. In this way, the bakery speaks to several of the story’s key themes. It becomes representative of the Fraught Family Bonds within the del Pino and Puente families because it symbolizes Lourdes’s position within the politics that divides the family, and also because Celia herself interprets the bakery as a direct affront to her convictions and believes that Lourdes sends photographs of her baked goods to remind Celia of Cuba’s constant food shortages. The bakery also draws attention to The Impact of Political Ideology on Individuals because “Yankee Doodle” is a phrase rooted in American revolutionary history. To Celia, the name stands as evidence of her daughter’s jingoistic devotion to her adopted country. It also speaks to the theme of Immigration, Exile, and Cuban Identity. Immigration is experienced differently by everyone, and part of García’s broader project in writing about the lives of immigrants is to represent a wide range of identifications and experiences. Lourdes, although she does occasionally miss her homeland, is largely comfortable in America and for her, the move does not feel like exile.

El Líder

Fidel Castro is never referred to by name within the narrative, but always by the nickname “El Líder.” This is emblematic of his status within the cult of personality surrounding him in Cuba. A “cult of personality” is a carefully curated set of rituals, artistic representations, and performative depictions that elevate a charismatic leader to near-godlike status within a society. Cults of personality establish a quasi-religious hero worship for a particular head of state that reinforces and further legitimizes their power. Within the historical framework of the 20th century, cults of personality are typically observed in repressive, communist states. Other historical examples of leaders whose rule was characterized by a cult of personality were China’s Mao Zedong and the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin. Celia’s family sees her devotion to El Líder as a kind of obsession. The cult of personality surrounding Fidel Castro is a motif within this text and within García’s writing as a whole. Her novel King of Cuba is directly focused on this phenomenon, and it appears in other texts as well. Within Dreaming of Cuban, mentions of “El Líder” highlight The Impact of Political Ideology on Individuals, because they instantiate Celia’s commitment to the project of socialism and emphasize her irrational fixation on its leader. The motif of El Líder also illustrates the theme of Fraught Family Bonds, because ideological differences are one of the key causes of familial rifts within Celia’s family.

Religion: Catholicism and Santería

Religion is a key point of focus within this story, and its use as a motif is multi-purpose. Dreaming in Cuban is deeply rooted in the history of Cuba and its diaspora. García emphasizes the impact of history on the lives of real people, and the novel is characterized by marked historical accuracy despite its frequent use of magical realism and its fluid narrative structure that shifts between different years and decades. The proliferation of references to Catholicism, La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre, Santería rituals and the Orishas, and to the atheism that overtly characterizes communism in Cuba collectively paint an accurate portrait of Cuba’s religious hybridity, which persists to this day. García is interested in challenging monolithic representations and interpretations, and the way that she depicts Cuba’s shifting amalgam of pre-colonial, Catholic, and socialist traditions illustrates the complexity of individual and group religious identifications.

The use of religion as a motif also enhances the theme of Immigration, Exile, and Cuban Identity. The narrative arcs of the women in Celia’s family focus on their individual quests for self-understanding and identity in the wake of exile. For Celia, Lourdes, Felicia, and Pilar, much of what they come to understand as their Cuban identity is rooted in the way that they practice religion, while Celia finds her “Cuban-ness” in her revolutionary zeal, her commitment to socialism, and her devotion to El Líder. For both Felicia and Pilar, being Cuban means maintaining a connection to Santería, ritual, and the Orishas. For Lourdes, a rejection of her mother’s atheism gives her a stronger sense of self. In each case, the characters access their cultural identity through a particular set of religious or ideological identifications. In this way, the motif of religion also speaks to Fraught Family Bonds, because there is little agreement amongst these women about spirituality, ideology, or identity.