The Women of Dreaming in Cuban Essay Example for Free

The Women of stargaze in Cuban EssayFour characters spanning three generations dominate the storyline of Dreaming in Cuban (Garcia, 1992), four women of the same blood who could not possibly contrast more. Centered on the rise to power of Fidel Castro and the ways in which the members of the family del Pino embraced or rejected la revolucion, Dreaming in Cuban is poignant tale enriched with beautiful language. The matriarch of the family is Celia del Pino, a woman whose passion for the lost love of her offspring can be replaced however, but not completely, by her ardor for the socialist ideals Castro brings to the island. Celia stands al cardinal in her superpatriotic zeal her lone companero in the family, son Javier, disappears to Czechoslovakia to further the case there and to hide his politics from his mother, Jorge. Celia is, of each(prenominal) her family, the only one suited to bear the torment life brings to them all. She knew before they were born that her daughte rs, though frame of her flesh, would be strangers to her.And although she would realize before his death that she had grown to love her husband, it was a different love than the torturesome passion she bore for Gustavo, her wayward Spanish lover who disappeared from her life completely when she was just a modern woman, not a love to replace but to reside, understandingly, alongside it. Even her zeal for El Lider and the revolution, a cause to which she could devote herself full as she was never able as a wife and mother, open(a) to her that quality which is mostly non-existent among men, a spirit of generosity.She knew that, without it, Cuba would fail (Garcia 114,115). Celias daughters are as different as the countries they live in. Lourdes, eldest, whose name her mother at her birth vowed to forget (Garcia 43), would immigrate to the States to melt down Castro and the revolution, epoch Felicia would be imprisoned by cruel husband who would nearly destroy her. Lourdes, always her fathers daughter, was fittingly named after the supernatural French locale (Garcia 42). Fitting not because there was eitherthing miraculous about her, but because it reflected the faith Jorge embraced and Celia scorned.By being born a girl, Lourdes denied her mother the chance to escape her marriage and seek out Gustavo in Spain, and it was perhaps due to the consequent shunning that Lourdes various attempts at different types of fulfillment are seemingly in vain. Whether by constantly eating, constantly sexually ruin her poor husband, over-mothering her daughter Pilar or harrying the immigrants who are always so briefly in her employ, Lourdes never manages to be fully satisfied with herself or with the world.Even her conversations with her father after his death left her disquieted and disoriented, as if the solace he sought to bring her only furthered her malcontent. Felicia was to a fault named with portent, though in a much more sinister fashion than her sister. When C elia was in the hospital she met a woman who had remove her husband by dousing him in gasoline and lighting him on fire. She would later be killed, also by being burned alive. Her name was Felicia Celia would name her second daughter in retentivity of her friend.Felicia would grow to marry a man, a merchant marine who was rarely home, and when he was only to abuse his wife and share his venereal diseases. Losing herself in that horrible place that resides choosing between family and family, Felicia would in the end seek to free herself as her namesake had, by burning her husband. Unfortunately for Felicia she did not manage to fully escape the clutches of unreality, and she would even drag her young son Ivanito into its grasp. Pilar is Lourdes headstrong, rebellious daughter.Having moved to America with her mother at a very young age, she has a rather idyllic memory of her grannie and Cuba, but it is what she longs to return to. For her entire life in the U. S. , her mother has s ought to repress her, much as she would like to suppress the revolution the withalk her homeland from her. Much as Lourdes remembers the first words her mother r in her presence, Pilar remembers conversations word for word all the way back into her infancy. Pilars owing(p) understanding of things at such a young age was likely why she did not alone accept things for what they were as many children do.And her refusal to accept the state of things, a feeling all of the other women in her family can readily identify with, would lead to her running away bringing on a building block new world of problems to understand. From generation to generation, the women of the del Pino family are constantly and consistently different. Pilar was born at the lineage of the revolution but would grow up away from it, her mother and aunt were the of the generation targeted by the movement but would ultimately resist it, and only Celia, her grandmother, of the conservative generation mostly likely to scorn communism would completely embrace it.And so each generation of the family stood alienated alienated from the others of their own respective generations whose ideals did not match their own, and alienated from their own family members for the same reason and many more. Looking back on ones own life, it is easy to remember the feeling of the latter, rolling your eyes at your out-dated parents or sighing in exasperation at your rebellious children. But imagine having no peers to turn to, no comrades to share stories and advice with, no empathy anywhere to be found. It is no wonder fulfillment was ever beyond their grasp.If the women of this story share any common ground, it is in their blood and their inability to find peace. And one, quite possibly, could be used to help the other. A great deal of the trials these women face lie in the division amongst them, and if they ever tried to address that, because maybe they wouldnt waste to continually seek answers in pecan stick y buns and Cuban sugar cane fields and Santeria cults. Perhaps that is the solace the spirit of Jorge del Pino is trying to bring perhaps he is saying, You are my family, my blood, my wife, my daughters, my granddaughters. Know that there will be differences.Know that you have made mistakes and will have regrets. Agree to disagree. Forgive one another. Love one another. Move on. Perhaps that is a little too simplistic. But I recognize something in this story that is all too common among people, a throw-your-hands-up billet that occurs when life happens and the current feels too strong. People are willing to surrender to one crisis in revise to reach the calm waters that bridge the gap to the next. But if you dont learn how to speak the rapids, what do you do when you reach the waterfall? References Garcia, Cristina. Dreaming in Cuban. New York, Ballantine. 1992.