Perez-Firmat's Life On The Hyphen
Ebb and Flow: Cuban-American Reality “Lucy, honey, if I wanted things Cuban I`d stayed in Havana. That`s the reason I married you, ‘cause you`re so different from everyone I`d known before.” -Ricky in I Love Lucy. This quote is from the iconic show from the 50`s, I Love Lucy, but also is used in Sustavo Perez-Firmat`s piece called Life on the Hyphen. In Perez-Firmat`s piece, Perez-Firmat relates the Cuban-American experience and how it is made up of several different generations who all have to go through three steps of adaptation to their new homeland. These three steps of adaptation are the substitutive stage, the destitution stage and the “here we are” stage. These three stages are illustrated through the generations of characters with
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the first of Celia del Pino, the second of Felicia and Lourdes, and the third of Pilar in the novel Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia. By analyzing these characters and comparing their experiences to Perez`s three steps, the characters demonstrate the unique Cuban-American reality across several generations and illustrate how the United States needs to become more educated on how immigrants should be treated as a whole.
Celia del Pino is the character that the novel begins with as she is the oldest in this family line, she represents the old, conservative world of Cuba and her perspective creates a contrast to the experiences and feelings of her children and grandchildren. The novel starts off with Celia in order to set the time period and to represent the conservative viewpoint of a Cuban during the reign of Fidel Castro. Celia, “equipped with binoculars” and “wearing her best house dress” sits in her “whicker chair” guarding the “north coast of Cuba”(3). These opening lines of the novel illustrate how Celia loves Cuba and wants to protect her country from any further invasion or war. She represents the first generation as she remembers the Cuban Missile Crisis very vividly. She even goes on to say how she sees no sign of “gusano traitors” and that she could spot another “Bay of Pigs invasion” before it even happened(3). This reference to this famous historical event epitomizes the characterization of Celia and the generation she represents. She represents the generation who is for the revolution and the dictator Fidel Castro, and would probably be very against the fact that part of
her family is living in the United States. The gusano traitors even references to the Cuban immigrants into the U. S. that she views as traitors to Cuba. This proclamation gives some insight into the family relationships as things can be extremely strained between her and her children if they go or live in the United States. Celia`s daughter Lourdes and granddaughter Pilar are two people from her family that do live in the United States. The separation of generations is even more evident if one generation immigrates as the children and grandchildren will not only lead a very different life than the one in Cuba, they also will have to learn another language that will make their native language a bit different from those who still live in Cuba. Celia even references how her granddaughter, Pilar, uses a Spanish that is “no longer hers” as she speaks the “hard-edged lexicon of bygone tourists” and worries that her granddaughter is “pale” and “malnourished and cold without the food of scarlets and greens”(7). This reference to Pilar`s letters really communicates how the language of each generation is one of the main ways how one can tell the differences between each. Celia barely recognizes the Spanish that Pilar uses as I am sure it is pretty mixed with English or the Spanish that over Cubans use in Brooklyn. The reference to the juxtaposition of the climates of Cuba and Brooklyn also illustrate how drastically different they way that Pilar has grown up in America compared to her other cousins or family who grew up in Cuba. This difference in life between Pilar and her cousins is really evidenced when Celia goes to pick up her twin granddaughter`s who “recount their camping trip” where they “fed midget bananas to a speckled horse” and examined “horned earthworms peculiar to the island”(38). The reference to the horse and these earthworms unique to Cuba really represent a sort of exotic notion as compared to the type of camping Pilar would do in the United States but a familiar way of camping and life in general for Pilar`s cousins who live in Cuba. Celia`s husband and father to Lourdes and Felicia is Jorge del Pino who ends up working for an American country as he resents El Líder and sees the United States as an opportunity to get away from the chaos of Cuba. These sentiments and his closeness to Lourdes is the main reason why she moved her family from Cuba to the United States and now is a big supporter of capitalism and the U.S. The fact that Jorge does go away to the U.S. makes Celia not respect him anymore, she even relates how she “grieves” for his “mixed up allegiances”(3) and Pilar even knows about their indifference as she sees her grandfather`s love letters be answered with letters “full of facts” which made her grandfather “sad”(33). The fact that Celia and Jorge`s relationship is so estranged is significant in the fact that they display the real divide in Cuba in regard to the revolution. Although they come from similar backgrounds, Jorge is fourteen years older and was a successful rancher in Cuba until the revolution injured him. The fact that Jorge left for New York as an injured man makes Celia see him as very weak and almost like his injury hurt his brain as she cannot believe he is against El Líder and the revolution that is very near to her heart. The rift between this couple trickles down to the rest of their family, especially as Lourdes made the decision to move her family to the United States. The rifts even go from the children to the grandchildren as Pilar resents her mother and feels very close to her grandmother. So much so that Pilar decides to run off and go to Cuba to see her grandmother as she feels her own mother does not understand her. Lourdes represents the second generation that migrated to the United States and she represents this new world as she is a business woman and raised her child mainly in the U.S. She rebels against her mother and the Cuban revolution as she was born hated by her mother and seen as someone damned from the beginning. When Celia became pregnant she said that she would “leave Jorge and sail to Spain” to her lover Gustavo if she had a boy because a boy could “make his way in this world” but could not “abandon a daughter to this life”(42). This not only sets up the possible resentment Celia may feel for Lourdes, but also demonstrates the differences in gender roles in Cuba that can further separate members in this family. This harsh but somewhat realistic scenario for Celia and many women in Cuba represent how it is not only hard for men to survive the turmoil in Cuba, but is even harder for women to survive in this world as they have to deal with men who act on women like prey. Also, a girl would have a harder life for the fact that during this time women still did not have much hope to provide for themselves without the help of a man. This leads me into the difference in life that Lourdes has in the United States and the representation of the Cuban-American life. Lourdes migrates to the United States but before this, the story of why she leaves epitomizes the reason why Celia did not want to have a girl in the first place. Her husband`s family had fled to Miami because of the revolution as the revolutionary government declared her husband`s land as now the property of the government. She yells at them to get out of her house and they not only raped her but gave her a “primeval scarping” that was “illegible” once she looked in the mirror(72). Lourdes then says how she wants to go farther and farther away from the warmth of Cuba and that is how she ends up in New York City. She even comments on herself being an immigrant and how she loves it most of all. She says that “immigration has redefined” her and unlike others she “welcomes her adopted language” as it presents “possibilities of reinvention” and loves winter the most of all as the cold and its` “layers protect her” from Cuba and the “lies” which never “possessed her”(73). The fact that Lourdes had to watch her husband be threatened and was raped for trying to protect her land gives her a great reason to resent not only Cuba but her mother, as well. She understands the current danger of Cuba and does not know if she will ever go back. She represents someone who is in the “here we are” stage of immigration as she has her own business and embraces her new language. It is a bit ironic that although she is a woman who has had to experience some tragedies in her life that men do not have to face, her strength and desire to succeed seem to present her as a more dominant and even masculine figure. It is even referenced when she sees the two men that rape her as having lips too feminine for a man(72). The rejection of Lourdes from her mother is conveyed when Celia proclaims that the pictures of “pastries” and each “glistening éclair is a grenade aimed at Celia`s political beliefs” and that each picture of Lourde` s success in America is a reminder of the “ongoing shortages in Cuba”(117). This quote truly depicts the main strain in relationship between Lourdes and Celia and how the two generations are dealing with political turmoil and the idea of immigration. While Celia rejects immigration and sees the U.S. as an enemy to her belief system, she also feels some jealousy at how well Lourdes seems to be doing there. One of the interesting characters of the second generation is Felicia, whose mental illness seems to correlate with the fact that she picks neither side on the revolution. Felicia goes through three husbands, is sent to the psychiatric ward, works in the sugar cane fields, the theatre and spent weeks training in guerrilla training and still is on neither side of the revolution. Felicia is most like her mother and does still live in Cuba, but her apparent mental illness, much like her mother`s, lands her in difficult situations. This brings me to another important aspect of the novel, each character is divided into sections but most of their sections appear in third person and shift between past and present events. This time shifting for each character and the use of the third person is important in order to see the family scope as a whole. To make the readers realize how much diversity and travesties appear in one family all stemming from similar problems because of being for or against the revolution in Cuba. Felicia even faces many difficulties as she is not for or against the revolution. The strictness of the revolutionists is communicated when other people in Felicia`s ward say how someone`s son was sent off to the “marble quarries” because he listened to “American Jazz” and wore his hair “too long”(108). While another young man proclaims how the leaders forget what they used to look like, as “fifteen years ago” they would have been thrown in a “Social Disgrace Unit” as it was “rebels who made the revolution”(109). This quote from an unnamed character invokes a theme in the play in the hypocrisy of the revolution and thus each character in the novel. Celia is very much for the revolution but does not realize that now her daughter that is rebelling against her the most is the most successful. The last main character of great importance is Pilar, the granddaughter of Celia and the character whose early immigrant status to the U.S. makes her more American that Cuban. Pilar moved to America when she was two but because of her grandmother`s letters and the over-bearing ways of her mother, she sees Cuba as a sort of promise land. A hot, passionate country that represents the stories from her grandmother that make Cuba seem larger than life to Pilar. While the readers understand that Pilar`s perspective is near sighted as Celia may over-dramatize her descriptions of life in Cuba because of her love of El Líder and pride for her country. Pilar represents a new, American-ized generation because her mother barely identifies herself as Cuban while owning her business in Brooklyn. While Loudres totally rejects her culture and probably most of her language because she uses English at her bakery, Pilar`s closeness to her grandmother makes her a perfect example of a Cuban-American. Pilar even states how “the family is hostile to the individual”(134) and the only thing she has in common with her mother is that when she doesn’t like someone, she “shows it.”(135). Pilar`s section is very specific on the differences between her and the other generations. Her events focus on rebellious music and the transition of child into woman. With this shift comes a shift out of innocence and away from the idolized view of Cuba. She states that now “Cuba is kind of dead to [her]” and says how she “resent[s] the hell out of the politicians” who force events on them to “dictate the memories” they`ll have when they`re old because now all she`ll have is her “imagination”(138). These revelations from Pilar accurately depict the life of someone who immigrated at a very young age. She does long for Cuba at times, but only for the sort of Cuba she imagines in her head. Overall, Pilar represents a new generation of adults who know about both their family’s culture but also tend to be a culture group of their own as they are neither truly American nor truly Cuban. Overall, the four main women across the three generations serve to illustrate the transitional movement of the Cuban-American reality and the ebb and flow of each family member that represents the complexity of Cuban-American families. The political turmoil in Cuba, along with feminist movements in the United States and revolution in the 70`s in general greatly impacted each individual in the family. Celia is obsessed with the revolution and her patriotism affects all members of her family, good or bad. Her sense and longing for the past greatly express the first generation`s pining for the traditional ways of living. Lourdes rebellion and Felicia`s apathy both anger and encourage Celia to be even more fastidious with her actions to help El Líder. Lourdes experiences represent the hurt and scorned citizens of Cuba that immigrated out of necessity and want for a better life. These experiences causing her to scorn at not only her family but her home country as well, abandoning all ties and assimilating so much that she seems to lose her Cuban heritage entirely in order to be successful in Brooklyn. Felicia`s apathy sends her to many camps and wards and represents the mental exhaustion that one can face from trying to figure out how to handle just life in general. She also serves as a sort of symbol for what her mother could be like if she had not spent her whole life obsessed with the revolution. Finally, Pilar is the newest generation whose memories of Cuba are mere imaginations as she grows older and older. She may visit Cuba again, but will probably not see Cuba as her homeland or will empathize with those living there. Lourdes and Pilar are the only ones that migrated to the U.S. but both seem to have gone through all three immigration stages, ending the novel in the “here we are” phase. Where they embrace their Cuban heritage but also take pride in their American ways. In conclusion, this novel and the transition of characters and time frames serve to correctly emphasize the continual ebb and flow of immigrants and their families. All members have gone through trials and tribulations and will continue to be up and down the rest of their lives. Each woman also represents three different types of generations who are consistently evident in immigrant families. The first being all Cuban and conservative in their Cuban ways, the second in proclaiming themselves Cuban but reacting against their parent`s mistakes, and the third in a totally different category where they are not a part of either culture. This novel is an excellent way to entertainingly validate the differences in immigrant generational families. The political and historical background of Cuba make the novel even more interesting as Cuban-Americans are unique in their own way because of their relationship with the U.S. In general, Garcia presents a sort of feminist while revolutionist themed novel that employs all contradicting factors of the Cuban families and their immigrant family members. Literature and this novel specifically is a great way to understand the importance of understanding how and why each immigrant and generation acts and reacts they way they do. If the United States and its` citizens understand this better, then we might have a better cultural and ethnic understanding of immigrants in the United States on a whole. This understanding could ease many debates in our country that are not always being correctly addressed as they are too generalized.
the first of Celia del Pino, the second of Felicia and Lourdes, and the third of Pilar in the novel Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia. By analyzing these characters and comparing their experiences to Perez`s three steps, the characters demonstrate the unique Cuban-American reality across several generations and illustrate how the United States needs to become more educated on how immigrants should be treated as a whole.
Celia del Pino is the character that the novel begins with as she is the oldest in this family line, she represents the old, conservative world of Cuba and her perspective creates a contrast to the experiences and feelings of her children and grandchildren. The novel starts off with Celia in order to set the time period and to represent the conservative viewpoint of a Cuban during the reign of Fidel Castro. Celia, “equipped with binoculars” and “wearing her best house dress” sits in her “whicker chair” guarding the “north coast of Cuba”(3). These opening lines of the novel illustrate how Celia loves Cuba and wants to protect her country from any further invasion or war. She represents the first generation as she remembers the Cuban Missile Crisis very vividly. She even goes on to say how she sees no sign of “gusano traitors” and that she could spot another “Bay of Pigs invasion” before it even happened(3). This reference to this famous historical event epitomizes the characterization of Celia and the generation she represents. She represents the generation who is for the revolution and the dictator Fidel Castro, and would probably be very against the fact that part of
her family is living in the United States. The gusano traitors even references to the Cuban immigrants into the U. S. that she views as traitors to Cuba. This proclamation gives some insight into the family relationships as things can be extremely strained between her and her children if they go or live in the United States. Celia`s daughter Lourdes and granddaughter Pilar are two people from her family that do live in the United States. The separation of generations is even more evident if one generation immigrates as the children and grandchildren will not only lead a very different life than the one in Cuba, they also will have to learn another language that will make their native language a bit different from those who still live in Cuba. Celia even references how her granddaughter, Pilar, uses a Spanish that is “no longer hers” as she speaks the “hard-edged lexicon of bygone tourists” and worries that her granddaughter is “pale” and “malnourished and cold without the food of scarlets and greens”(7). This reference to Pilar`s letters really communicates how the language of each generation is one of the main ways how one can tell the differences between each. Celia barely recognizes the Spanish that Pilar uses as I am sure it is pretty mixed with English or the Spanish that over Cubans use in Brooklyn. The reference to the juxtaposition of the climates of Cuba and Brooklyn also illustrate how drastically different they way that Pilar has grown up in America compared to her other cousins or family who grew up in Cuba. This difference in life between Pilar and her cousins is really evidenced when Celia goes to pick up her twin granddaughter`s who “recount their camping trip” where they “fed midget bananas to a speckled horse” and examined “horned earthworms peculiar to the island”(38). The reference to the horse and these earthworms unique to Cuba really represent a sort of exotic notion as compared to the type of camping Pilar would do in the United States but a familiar way of camping and life in general for Pilar`s cousins who live in Cuba. Celia`s husband and father to Lourdes and Felicia is Jorge del Pino who ends up working for an American country as he resents El Líder and sees the United States as an opportunity to get away from the chaos of Cuba. These sentiments and his closeness to Lourdes is the main reason why she moved her family from Cuba to the United States and now is a big supporter of capitalism and the U.S. The fact that Jorge does go away to the U.S. makes Celia not respect him anymore, she even relates how she “grieves” for his “mixed up allegiances”(3) and Pilar even knows about their indifference as she sees her grandfather`s love letters be answered with letters “full of facts” which made her grandfather “sad”(33). The fact that Celia and Jorge`s relationship is so estranged is significant in the fact that they display the real divide in Cuba in regard to the revolution. Although they come from similar backgrounds, Jorge is fourteen years older and was a successful rancher in Cuba until the revolution injured him. The fact that Jorge left for New York as an injured man makes Celia see him as very weak and almost like his injury hurt his brain as she cannot believe he is against El Líder and the revolution that is very near to her heart. The rift between this couple trickles down to the rest of their family, especially as Lourdes made the decision to move her family to the United States. The rifts even go from the children to the grandchildren as Pilar resents her mother and feels very close to her grandmother. So much so that Pilar decides to run off and go to Cuba to see her grandmother as she feels her own mother does not understand her. Lourdes represents the second generation that migrated to the United States and she represents this new world as she is a business woman and raised her child mainly in the U.S. She rebels against her mother and the Cuban revolution as she was born hated by her mother and seen as someone damned from the beginning. When Celia became pregnant she said that she would “leave Jorge and sail to Spain” to her lover Gustavo if she had a boy because a boy could “make his way in this world” but could not “abandon a daughter to this life”(42). This not only sets up the possible resentment Celia may feel for Lourdes, but also demonstrates the differences in gender roles in Cuba that can further separate members in this family. This harsh but somewhat realistic scenario for Celia and many women in Cuba represent how it is not only hard for men to survive the turmoil in Cuba, but is even harder for women to survive in this world as they have to deal with men who act on women like prey. Also, a girl would have a harder life for the fact that during this time women still did not have much hope to provide for themselves without the help of a man. This leads me into the difference in life that Lourdes has in the United States and the representation of the Cuban-American life. Lourdes migrates to the United States but before this, the story of why she leaves epitomizes the reason why Celia did not want to have a girl in the first place. Her husband`s family had fled to Miami because of the revolution as the revolutionary government declared her husband`s land as now the property of the government. She yells at them to get out of her house and they not only raped her but gave her a “primeval scarping” that was “illegible” once she looked in the mirror(72). Lourdes then says how she wants to go farther and farther away from the warmth of Cuba and that is how she ends up in New York City. She even comments on herself being an immigrant and how she loves it most of all. She says that “immigration has redefined” her and unlike others she “welcomes her adopted language” as it presents “possibilities of reinvention” and loves winter the most of all as the cold and its` “layers protect her” from Cuba and the “lies” which never “possessed her”(73). The fact that Lourdes had to watch her husband be threatened and was raped for trying to protect her land gives her a great reason to resent not only Cuba but her mother, as well. She understands the current danger of Cuba and does not know if she will ever go back. She represents someone who is in the “here we are” stage of immigration as she has her own business and embraces her new language. It is a bit ironic that although she is a woman who has had to experience some tragedies in her life that men do not have to face, her strength and desire to succeed seem to present her as a more dominant and even masculine figure. It is even referenced when she sees the two men that rape her as having lips too feminine for a man(72). The rejection of Lourdes from her mother is conveyed when Celia proclaims that the pictures of “pastries” and each “glistening éclair is a grenade aimed at Celia`s political beliefs” and that each picture of Lourde` s success in America is a reminder of the “ongoing shortages in Cuba”(117). This quote truly depicts the main strain in relationship between Lourdes and Celia and how the two generations are dealing with political turmoil and the idea of immigration. While Celia rejects immigration and sees the U.S. as an enemy to her belief system, she also feels some jealousy at how well Lourdes seems to be doing there. One of the interesting characters of the second generation is Felicia, whose mental illness seems to correlate with the fact that she picks neither side on the revolution. Felicia goes through three husbands, is sent to the psychiatric ward, works in the sugar cane fields, the theatre and spent weeks training in guerrilla training and still is on neither side of the revolution. Felicia is most like her mother and does still live in Cuba, but her apparent mental illness, much like her mother`s, lands her in difficult situations. This brings me to another important aspect of the novel, each character is divided into sections but most of their sections appear in third person and shift between past and present events. This time shifting for each character and the use of the third person is important in order to see the family scope as a whole. To make the readers realize how much diversity and travesties appear in one family all stemming from similar problems because of being for or against the revolution in Cuba. Felicia even faces many difficulties as she is not for or against the revolution. The strictness of the revolutionists is communicated when other people in Felicia`s ward say how someone`s son was sent off to the “marble quarries” because he listened to “American Jazz” and wore his hair “too long”(108). While another young man proclaims how the leaders forget what they used to look like, as “fifteen years ago” they would have been thrown in a “Social Disgrace Unit” as it was “rebels who made the revolution”(109). This quote from an unnamed character invokes a theme in the play in the hypocrisy of the revolution and thus each character in the novel. Celia is very much for the revolution but does not realize that now her daughter that is rebelling against her the most is the most successful. The last main character of great importance is Pilar, the granddaughter of Celia and the character whose early immigrant status to the U.S. makes her more American that Cuban. Pilar moved to America when she was two but because of her grandmother`s letters and the over-bearing ways of her mother, she sees Cuba as a sort of promise land. A hot, passionate country that represents the stories from her grandmother that make Cuba seem larger than life to Pilar. While the readers understand that Pilar`s perspective is near sighted as Celia may over-dramatize her descriptions of life in Cuba because of her love of El Líder and pride for her country. Pilar represents a new, American-ized generation because her mother barely identifies herself as Cuban while owning her business in Brooklyn. While Loudres totally rejects her culture and probably most of her language because she uses English at her bakery, Pilar`s closeness to her grandmother makes her a perfect example of a Cuban-American. Pilar even states how “the family is hostile to the individual”(134) and the only thing she has in common with her mother is that when she doesn’t like someone, she “shows it.”(135). Pilar`s section is very specific on the differences between her and the other generations. Her events focus on rebellious music and the transition of child into woman. With this shift comes a shift out of innocence and away from the idolized view of Cuba. She states that now “Cuba is kind of dead to [her]” and says how she “resent[s] the hell out of the politicians” who force events on them to “dictate the memories” they`ll have when they`re old because now all she`ll have is her “imagination”(138). These revelations from Pilar accurately depict the life of someone who immigrated at a very young age. She does long for Cuba at times, but only for the sort of Cuba she imagines in her head. Overall, Pilar represents a new generation of adults who know about both their family’s culture but also tend to be a culture group of their own as they are neither truly American nor truly Cuban. Overall, the four main women across the three generations serve to illustrate the transitional movement of the Cuban-American reality and the ebb and flow of each family member that represents the complexity of Cuban-American families. The political turmoil in Cuba, along with feminist movements in the United States and revolution in the 70`s in general greatly impacted each individual in the family. Celia is obsessed with the revolution and her patriotism affects all members of her family, good or bad. Her sense and longing for the past greatly express the first generation`s pining for the traditional ways of living. Lourdes rebellion and Felicia`s apathy both anger and encourage Celia to be even more fastidious with her actions to help El Líder. Lourdes experiences represent the hurt and scorned citizens of Cuba that immigrated out of necessity and want for a better life. These experiences causing her to scorn at not only her family but her home country as well, abandoning all ties and assimilating so much that she seems to lose her Cuban heritage entirely in order to be successful in Brooklyn. Felicia`s apathy sends her to many camps and wards and represents the mental exhaustion that one can face from trying to figure out how to handle just life in general. She also serves as a sort of symbol for what her mother could be like if she had not spent her whole life obsessed with the revolution. Finally, Pilar is the newest generation whose memories of Cuba are mere imaginations as she grows older and older. She may visit Cuba again, but will probably not see Cuba as her homeland or will empathize with those living there. Lourdes and Pilar are the only ones that migrated to the U.S. but both seem to have gone through all three immigration stages, ending the novel in the “here we are” phase. Where they embrace their Cuban heritage but also take pride in their American ways. In conclusion, this novel and the transition of characters and time frames serve to correctly emphasize the continual ebb and flow of immigrants and their families. All members have gone through trials and tribulations and will continue to be up and down the rest of their lives. Each woman also represents three different types of generations who are consistently evident in immigrant families. The first being all Cuban and conservative in their Cuban ways, the second in proclaiming themselves Cuban but reacting against their parent`s mistakes, and the third in a totally different category where they are not a part of either culture. This novel is an excellent way to entertainingly validate the differences in immigrant generational families. The political and historical background of Cuba make the novel even more interesting as Cuban-Americans are unique in their own way because of their relationship with the U.S. In general, Garcia presents a sort of feminist while revolutionist themed novel that employs all contradicting factors of the Cuban families and their immigrant family members. Literature and this novel specifically is a great way to understand the importance of understanding how and why each immigrant and generation acts and reacts they way they do. If the United States and its` citizens understand this better, then we might have a better cultural and ethnic understanding of immigrants in the United States on a whole. This understanding could ease many debates in our country that are not always being correctly addressed as they are too generalized.