Dream trips from Havana to Brooklyn
Dreaming in Cuban
By Cristina Garcia
Flamingo Publications. 245 pp. $14.95
Reviewed by Kylie Budge
Set in Havana and Brooklyn, Dreaming in Cuban is a wonderful story which interweaves the lives of four women from one family. In Cuba: Grandmother Celia, a loyal communist with a passion for Castro, and her youngest daughter, mad Felicia. In Brooklyn: Felicia's sister, Lourdes, the fervently capitalist proprietor of the Yankee Doodle Bakery; and her daughter, Pilar, the lovable, cynical and artistic punk.
The story floats between the lives and dreams of Celia and Felicia and their children and lovers on the tropical island of Cuba, and the argumentative and tense relationship between Lourdes and Pilar in the polluted, overcrowded New York of the 1970s. The story evolves through a series of letters Celia wrote to a Spanish lover over a period of 25 years, through the individual storytelling of each woman and through a combination of all of their dreams.
Celia remembers well the Batista dictatorship years in Cuba and the struggle for democracy and justice in the 1950s. She becomes particularly committed to keeping Cuba free from US domination after her husband dies. She does this by keeping watch from her small house, which overlooks the ocean on the north coast.
Celia's life is the thread by which the story is held together. The other women's lives interact with hers, through both hostility and love, as each grapples with the impact of growing up Cuban, whether it be in Cuba or New York.
Author Cristina Garcia was also born in Cuba and grew up in New York. It's truly a joy to be able to read anything honest about Cuba that's been bought from a mainstream bookshop. Dreaming in Cuba is a rare find.