Name: Dreaming in Cuban
ISBN: 9781417636211

Cristina Garcia

Three women within a Cuban family struggle to persevere during the Cuban Revolution

Dreaming in Cuban

Rebecca Lum

But sooner or later I’d have to return to New York. I know now it’s where I belong—not instead of here, but more than here.

Cristina García

Three generations of the Del Pino family--Cuban expatriates--play out their dreams and dramas in Havana, Brooklyn, and the Cuban seaside in the years between 1972-1980. Reprint.

A Novel

Sarah Sammis

I first heard of Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia from its excerpt in Havana: Tales of a City. Enchanted by what I had read there I added the book to my wishlist. Random BookCrossing luck a few months ago put the full book into my hands.

Dreaming in Cuban is two parallel and related stories. One is about an ailing matriarch in Cuba in the 1970s. The other is about her estranged grand-daughter living in New York in the 1980s. The chapters are dark, moody, sometimes humorous, always emotionally charged.

In both the excerpt and the full novel, I was most reminded of Cereus Blooms at Night by Shani Mootoo. That said, in its full version, I found Dreaming in Cuban to be slow going in parts. It didn't flow as well as the sample chapter had Havana.

“Impressive . . . [Cristina García’s] story is about three generations of Cuban women and their separate responses to the revolution. Her special feat is to tell it in a style as warm and gentle as the ‘sustaining aromas of vanilla and almond,’ as rhythmic as the music of Beny Moré.”—Time Cristina García’s acclaimed book is the haunting, bittersweet story of a family experiencing a country’s revolution and the revelations that follow. The lives of Celia del Pino and her husband, daughters, and grandchildren mirror the magical realism of Cuba itself, a landscape of beauty and poverty, idealism and corruption. Dreaming in Cuban is “a work that possesses both the intimacy of a Chekov story and the hallucinatory magic of a novel by Gabriel García Márquez” (The New York Times). In celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the novel’s original publication, this edition features a new introduction by the author. Praise for Dreaming in Cuban “Remarkable . . . an intricate weaving of dramatic events with the supernatural and the cosmic . . . evocative and lush.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Captures the pain, the distance, the frustrations and the dreams of these family dramas with a vivid, poetic prose.”—The Washington Post “Brilliant . . . With tremendous skill, passion and humor, García just may have written the definitive story of Cuban exiles and some of those they left behind.”—The Denver Post

There was probably a decent story hiding underneath all that messy, overly-artistic writing. But I couldn’t find it.

**This review contains minor spoilers regarding content warnings**

 today. It left me feeling exactly like I did the first time I tried to look at a 

 book as a kid; confused, frustrated, and grumpily wondering what the was the key to being able to see the hidden picture. Unfortunately, 

 was frustrating from cover to cover. Giving it two stars is generous.

The story follows multiple generations of a Cuban family with a particular focus on how the family is both physically and emotionally divided by the Cuban revolution. The description says it cover the mid-1930s to 1980. I can’t say for sure, because the story was too arduous to keep track of. There were multiple points of view skipping between 3rd and 1st person with some epistolary sections thrown in. And it was in present tense – which I utterly loathe. So the non-chronological format and spastic POV changes would have made any story hard to follow. But on top of that, the writing itself was florid and had a tendency to wander off lackadaisically. 

If this novel were personified, it would be that one kid in a soccer game who just sits on the field pulling petals off dandelions.

The narrative jumped around through decades and between I don’t know how many characters. It was extremely difficult to keep track of everyone let alone when things were happening. This review probably won’t include any of the characters’ names, because even though I finished this book only a couple of hours ago, I am already forgetting the characters. In character-driven stories, it is critical to feel emotionally invested in the characters. But I did not care about a single one of them. These were not likeable people. And the tragic bits were tragic because the things themselves were tragic, not because of any passible character development. Again, I’m sure somewhere in there were some decent points about political upheaval, diaspora, culture, and human nature. But it was all diluted by the messy writing.

“Mostly, though I paint her in blue. Until I returned to Cuba, I never realized how many blues exist. The aquamarines near the shoreline, the azures of deeper waters, the eggshell blues beneath my grandmother's eyes, the fragile indigos tracking her hands. There's a blue, too, in the curves of the palms, and the edges of the words we speak, a blue tinge to the sand and the seashells and the plump gulls on the beach. The mole by Abuela's mouth is also blue, a vanishing blue.”

The title referenced dreaming. In a literal sense, it is referring to one of the characters starting to dream in Spanish rather than English as she reconnects with her Cuban roots. But the writing overall had a dreamlike quality. No, not “dreamy” as in “beautiful,” “ethereal,” and “idyllic.” “Dreamy” as in “vague,” “distracted,” and “how badly was my brain tripping during REM for me to dream something that bizarre?” Usually I like Magical Realism, but in this case, the spells and ghosts just made everything even more confusing.

You could say there are strong female characters in this story. But their assertive action often takes the form of mental instability: child neglect, setting someone on fire, putting lye on someone's head, pushing someone to their death... these women were disturbing and disturbed. So I’m not sure what the message was supposed to be. I certainly did not expect a story about the Cuban revolution to be light or happy, but I wanted to be able to like at least some of the characters. This veered awfully close to trauma porn. That plus the gratuitous vulgarity and crassness reminded me of 

 in all the wrong ways. I will call out content warnings for rape, violence, murder, sexually explicit content, mental illness, forced institutionalization, domestic violence, child neglect/abuse, gaslighting, animal death/sacrifice, cancer, terminal illness, eating disorders, miscarriages, and more.

I wanted an emotional story that taught me more about Cuban culture and the revolution. I didn’t get any of that. Now I just want to be done with this book for good. So much so that I actually managed to write my review the same day I finished the book. Now the only thing left to do is donate my copy of the book so I never have to look at it again.

Characters and Character Development: 1 Star

Colleen

There was probably a decent story hiding underneath all that messy, overly-artistic writing. But I couldn’t find it.

**This review contains minor spoilers regarding content warnings**


I finished reading Dreaming in Cuban today. It left me feeling exactly like I did the first time I tried to look at a Magic Eye book as a kid; confused, frustrated, and grumpily wondering what the was the key to being able to see the hidden picture. Unfortunately, Dreaming in Cuban was frustrating from cover to cover. Giving it two stars is generous.

The story follows multiple generations of a Cuban family with a particular focus on how the family is both physically and emotionally divided by the Cuban revolution. The description says it cover the mid-1930s to 1980. I can’t say for sure, because the story was too arduous to keep track of. There were multiple points of view skipping between 3rd and 1st person with some epistolary sections thrown in. And it was in present tense – which I utterly loathe. So the non-chronological format and spastic POV changes would have made any story hard to follow. But on top of that, the writing itself was florid and had a tendency to wander off lackadaisically. If this novel were personified, it would be that one kid in a soccer game who just sits on the field pulling petals off dandelions.

The narrative jumped around through decades and between I don’t know how many characters. It was extremely difficult to keep track of everyone let alone when things were happening. This review probably won’t include any of the characters’ names, because even though I finished this book only a couple of hours ago, I am already forgetting the characters. In character-driven stories, it is critical to feel emotionally invested in the characters. But I did not care about a single one of them. These were not likeable people. And the tragic bits were tragic because the things themselves were tragic, not because of any passible character development. Again, I’m sure somewhere in there were some decent points about political upheaval, diaspora, culture, and human nature. But it was all diluted by the messy writing.

“Mostly, though I paint her in blue. Until I returned to Cuba, I never realized how many blues exist. The aquamarines near the shoreline, the azures of deeper waters, the eggshell blues beneath my grandmother's eyes, the fragile indigos tracking her hands. There's a blue, too, in the curves of the palms, and the edges of the words we speak, a blue tinge to the sand and the seashells and the plump gulls on the beach. The mole by Abuela's mouth is also blue, a vanishing blue.”


The title referenced dreaming. In a literal sense, it is referring to one of the characters starting to dream in Spanish rather than English as she reconnects with her Cuban roots. But the writing overall had a dreamlike quality. No, not “dreamy” as in “beautiful,” “ethereal,” and “idyllic.” “Dreamy” as in “vague,” “distracted,” and “how badly was my brain tripping during REM for me to dream something that bizarre?” Usually I like Magical Realism, but in this case, the spells and ghosts just made everything even more confusing.

You could say there are strong female characters in this story. But their assertive action often takes the form of mental instability: child neglect, setting someone on fire, putting lye on someone's head, pushing someone to their death... these women were disturbing and disturbed. So I’m not sure what the message was supposed to be. I certainly did not expect a story about the Cuban revolution to be light or happy, but I wanted to be able to like at least some of the characters. This veered awfully close to trauma porn. That plus the gratuitous vulgarity and crassness reminded me of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao in all the wrong ways. I will call out content warnings for rape, violence, murder, sexually explicit content, mental illness, forced institutionalization, domestic violence, child neglect/abuse, gaslighting, animal death/sacrifice, cancer, terminal illness, eating disorders, miscarriages, and more.

I wanted an emotional story that taught me more about Cuban culture and the revolution. I didn’t get any of that. Now I just want to be done with this book for good. So much so that I actually managed to write my review the same day I finished the book. Now the only thing left to do is donate my copy of the book so I never have to look at it again.


RATING FACTORS:
Ease of Reading: 2 Stars
Writing Style: 2 Stars
Characters and Character Development: 1 Star
Plot Structure and Development: 1 Star
Level of Captivation: 2 Stars
Originality: 2 Stars

Dreaming in Cuban

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