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Voices from Exile 67
Cristina García: Cuban Dreams
Though she has no memory of living in Cuba—her family left
the island when she was just two—Cristina García has made
Cuba and the experiences of Cubans the focus of her novels. Of
her debut,
Dreaming in Cuban
, García remarked, “I surprised
myself by how Cuban the book turned out to be. I don’t remem-
ber growing up with a longing for Cuba, so I didn’t realize how
Cuban I was, how deep a sense I had of exile and longing.”
García was born in 1958 in Havana. In 1961, to escape the
Castro regime, her family immigrated to the United States.
They settled in New York City.
Throughout her childhood,
García says, her parents—who
spoke Spanish at home—told
stories about what life had
been like in Cuba. They were
vehemently anti-Castro.
For a time, García consid-
ered a career in business or
government. But she went into
journalism instead. Eventually
she became the Miami bureau
chief for
Time
magazine.
In 1984 García and her sis-
ter went to Cuba to visit their
grandmother. The trip turned
out to be a pivotal event in
García’s life. “For 20 years,”
she recalled, “I’d had no con-
Cristina García’s fiction has been translated
into more than a dozen languages. Her novels
include
Dreaming in Cuban, Monkey
Hunting
, and
King of Cuba
.