Arts and Literature of Cuba

scious longing for the island; then suddenly it flooded over me.” In the years that followed, a story stirred up by her visit to Cuba gradually began taking shape. In 1992, two years after she’d quit journalism to focus on fiction writing, that story saw the light as Dreaming in Cuban . The critically acclaimed novel was a finalist for the National Book Award. Themes that resonate especially with Cubans—including exile, family separation, and the polarization of politics—figure prominently in Dreaming in Cuban . The novel centers on the life of Celia Almeida del Pino—a Cuban woman who suffers from depression and mental illness—and her children and grandchildren. The Cuban Revolution divides the family phys- ically: Celia’s daughter Lourdes and her husband and child flee to the United States after the government seizes their ranch and a soldier attacks Lourdes. The revolution also divides the family emotionally: Celia’s fervent support for the Castro regime helps alienate her from both Lourdes and another daughter, Felicia. García followed up Dreaming in Cuban with The Agüero Sisters (1997). Its protagonists are estranged sisters. One lives in Cuba and the other in the United States, having escaped the island in the early years of the Castro regime. The starting point for García’s next novel, 2003’s Monkey Hunting , is a less- er-known episode in Cuban history: the importation of Chinese indentured laborers to the island during the 1800s. García has said she views her first three novels as a loose trilo- gy, serving “to amplify an appreciation for the complex history that is Cuba.” Among García’s other novels, Cuba is a central focus of

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Arts and Literature of Cuba