In Cuban I Was A German Shephard Analysis
I’ve chosen Ana Menéndez’s story “In Cuba I Was a German Shephard” because, since I’m a Latino, I thought I could relate to the story.
The story is about four Latino men (two Cubans -– Máximo and Raúl -- and two Dominicans – Carlos and Antonio) that gather together every morning to play Dominos in a park in Miami. The story often goes back in time telling the reader about the background of some of the men – especially Máximo - and how they lived their lives in their countries before coming to America.
In Ana Menéndez’s tale, Máximo is the one who is always telling jokes about his homeland. In one of these jokes, he says that a group of rafters is on a Cuban shore ready to sail to Miami, and one of them sees Fidel Castro coming to the shore
with a raft on his back saying that he was going to Miami, too. Next, one of them tells Fidel if he was leaving the island, then there was no reason for them to go to Miami. After that, the rafter offers Fidel his raft so the Comandante could get out of Cuba (Menéndez, 2001, para. 28-35).
Another really interesting thing in the story, something I see daily here in the US as an immigrant, is the fact that a lot of highly educated immigrants from Latin America usually don’t work on their former profession when they get here. In the story, Máximo is a Cuban professor that comes to America and works as a taxi driver and a cook, for example. He couldn’t become a professor in the US, as he was in Cuba, because “His Spanish and his University of Havana credentials meant nothing here” (Menéndez, 2001, para. 25).
I really like the story because many things are similar to what I experience living in a foreign country. The jokes about our countries’ own problems, the memories we share with our fellow countryman, and the change of life each one of us has to go through trying to have a better life for ourselves and for our families are just a few things in which I could, for a moment, relate to the tale as if I was one of those characters in the story.
The story is about four Latino men (two Cubans -– Máximo and Raúl -- and two Dominicans – Carlos and Antonio) that gather together every morning to play Dominos in a park in Miami. The story often goes back in time telling the reader about the background of some of the men – especially Máximo - and how they lived their lives in their countries before coming to America.
In Ana Menéndez’s tale, Máximo is the one who is always telling jokes about his homeland. In one of these jokes, he says that a group of rafters is on a Cuban shore ready to sail to Miami, and one of them sees Fidel Castro coming to the shore
with a raft on his back saying that he was going to Miami, too. Next, one of them tells Fidel if he was leaving the island, then there was no reason for them to go to Miami. After that, the rafter offers Fidel his raft so the Comandante could get out of Cuba (Menéndez, 2001, para. 28-35).
Another really interesting thing in the story, something I see daily here in the US as an immigrant, is the fact that a lot of highly educated immigrants from Latin America usually don’t work on their former profession when they get here. In the story, Máximo is a Cuban professor that comes to America and works as a taxi driver and a cook, for example. He couldn’t become a professor in the US, as he was in Cuba, because “His Spanish and his University of Havana credentials meant nothing here” (Menéndez, 2001, para. 25).
I really like the story because many things are similar to what I experience living in a foreign country. The jokes about our countries’ own problems, the memories we share with our fellow countryman, and the change of life each one of us has to go through trying to have a better life for ourselves and for our families are just a few things in which I could, for a moment, relate to the tale as if I was one of those characters in the story.