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