The protagonists of Alvarez's and Garcia's novels are in a constant search for their true identity. The political events of their homelands, and the subsequent exile, all the chaos caused by the history, hugely influenced the way of life and the shape of self of each of the Garcia and del Pino women. Collecting and putting together the pieces of memories resembles the putting together a jigsaw of their identity. Both Yolanda and Pilar have the need to go back to their fatherland, to all the memories and stories connected to each island - and to each family's own history - in order to displace themselves from America and to see whether they can find their true selves by way of this process.
The memories, as pictured in these stories, are trapped in some in-between space: between two different cultures, languages. On one hand they bridge the gap between those two worlds, allowing to put together the souls' jigsaw of those who experience them into one unified being. On the other hand, the memories, which are very often of unpleasant experiences, cause the tension within one's conscience and force to struggle through that continuous attempt of compiling one clear picture of identity.
The reader can never be certain whether the memories are actual accounts of facts (as meant on the novel level, rather than autobiographical), or if they are memories mingled with imagination, psychological disorder (as in the case of Garcia sisters or Pilar Puente's aunt Felicia), reflecting the self-image of the story-teller. "And there's only my imagination where our history should be" says Pilar, the narrator and history keeper of Dreaming in Cuban (Garcia, 138). How much can we trust the characters and take their memories as real for granted, where the dead live and voodoo is practised? Transience of memories adds to the novels' appeal, making the stories unique in a way that leaves space for the reader's own self-(re)discovery. Jacqueline Stefanko in her essay New Ways of Telling: Latinas' Narratives of Exile and Return says that "Alvarez's novel [...] engages in a dynamic between exile and return, narrating what cannot be narrated" (55). Dreams and memories are thus very closely related in the way Alvarez describes them. We as readers can never be certain what is real and what is magical-real.
There is insanity caused by - or else, being a result of - split identity, and the need to recover the past, which does not exist any more - which is gone: "Felicia's mind floods with thoughts, thoughts from the past, from the future, other people's thoughts" (Garcia, 76). Memories serve as a vehicle to recollect the past and to give it a meaning, on the way to understand the present and to find 'self'. Migration, Stefanko says, is a way of narrating memories “infusing the empty/open/silent spaces in history, discourses, and politics” (51). The empty-slash-open-slash-silent history is a recurrent paradigm for memory recovery in both Alvarez's and Garcia's works: seen in Yolanda's scattered pieces of “head-slash-heart-slash-soul” (Alvarez, 78), as well as in Celia's fragmented epistolary memoir and Pilar's art, in Garcia's novel.
How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents
Julia Alvarez's novel is written in a reversed chronological order, covering 30 year time period. The structure of the book facilitates reader's insight into the family history with a constant reminder of its effect on the present. Because we cannot speak of the events taking place before or after, we have the impression of sinking into each character's own world of experiences, daydreams and frustrations while trying to build their own identity. Past experiences, or rather the memory of them - which might substantially differ from the actual events, are distorted by each girl's way of looking at them and recording them in their memory. Nevertheless, memories of the past experiences, ingrained deeply at the back of the head, play a significant part in shaping of the identity.
One of those events, which have repercussions on the girls' future life is the instilled by the Catholic tradition aversion to sex. Yolanda's fear of pregnancy or eternal damnation has a huge influence on the relationship with her boyfriend Rudy. Her reluctance finally makes Rudy end the relationship, leaving her devastated. While Julie Barak finds this moment "funny, poignant and powerful" she also points out that "Yolanda's naivete and her bilingual, bicultural confusion / awareness raises the reader's consciousness" (169). Yolanda does not really have any bad past experiences concerning the private sphere, what bothers her though, is that quiet voice of contempt for foreign promiscuity lurking in the corner of her Dominican part of cultural heritage: "I would never find someone who would understand my peculiar mix of Catholicism and agnosticism, Hispanic and American styles" says Yo (99). Already before, as well as after this event, she tries to find a way of dealing with it. She writes love poems together with, and for Rudy - the poetic language bridges her idealistic view of platonic love with Rudy's sensual hints, which he has to explain more explicitly. When that does not work, ultimately leading to a break up, Yolanda cannot find any other consolation than to reach for the help of a crucifix hidden in a drawer, which she keeps as a "security blanket". Rudy shows up in her life a few years later with the intention of finally seducing Yolanda. And again, she feels this is not the right thing to do. After refusing him though, she still feels uneasy - for the time has not rid her of the humiliating feelings concerning this relationship, and reaches for the bottle of wine he left at her place. All the three attempts to deal with the troubles in men-women relationships that Yolanda will keep on encountering show how the memory of her cultural heritage leaves a strong imprint on her actions and the way she feels about them throughout the rest of her life.
Not only how, but also what is being remembered influences who the characters become. Carla remembers the naked man in a car and racism she faced at school. These are unpleasant memories - the new, that she only experiences in America, as opposed to the old - the good memories of early childhood - from back at home. This bad newness creates tension which she as an immigrant cannot get rid of. The lack of language - being an immigrant experience - forces her to suppress the fear as she cannot express herself in front of the policemen while trying to report the pervert. Her "classroom English" does not allow her to let it out in and forget. Similar situation occurs when Carla faces racism at school - something which never before happened to her, something that would only happen to "blue-black" Haitian servants but not "café-con-leche" conquistador descendants (Alvarez, 218). Mean boys at school throw stones at Carla, calling her "dirty spic" and ordering to "go back where she comes from" (153). Here the roles of the oppressed and the oppressor reverse, again creating tension between the past and present. The self of an immigrant is floating, trying to settle down, but never able to, due to the contradictory memories of the past influencing the present. In her award winning journalistic blog - published as a book Baghdad Burning - concerning issues of political exile, Riverbend (whose identity is carefully hidden) examines the effect of hostile attitudes on a displaced individual: "A refugee is someone who isn’t really welcome in any country - including their own... especially their own" (1). While she is speaking of a war refugee experiences in a different time and place than Alvarez's characters live, this also clearly applies to a feeling of displacement which fractures the identity of every immigrant worldwide regardless of the culture.
It is also interesting to note the kind of memories Sandi chose to remember, which in the long run fashion her and the relationship with her milieu. Sandi caught her father kissing the host's wife at a dinner in the restaurant rest room. After the first feelings of disgust, she quickly learns how to use it to her advantage. She feels like Mrs. Fanning owns her something and has no inhibitions in demanding what she desires at the moment, boldly asking for the dancer dolls for her and her sisters. Mrs. Fanning behaviour - when she dashes onto the stage during the Spanish performance, creating "a parody of it, a second rate combination of cultures that Sandi cannot find fulfilling" - is seen as the new foreign thing, which is confusing and bewildering in this new American world (Barak, 171).
Memories affect Sandi's future personal relationships, for the sexual images - as it is implied in the scene at Dona Charito's - have haunted her as a child and will be haunting her for long in her adult life. One day during the painting lessons, Sandi wanders off on her own to the back of the house and peeps through the window into a shed. She sees Don Jose working on his sculptures and at some point notices him being naked, "perfectly proportioned, except for one thing", who "grew big like those bulls on the ranch" (Alvarez, 250). It is those images that stuck in the Sandi's mind. And it is those images, which evoke - at such an early age - carnal scene with bulls she'd seen on her grandfather's farm. The constant recollection of memories and comparison to other such events implies that Sandi will be in a sense troubled, or defected, in her grown-up relationships.
And we do learn that Sandra finally develops psychological disorders. She has a desire to be attractive, just like typical American girls. In that desperate need to be like everyone else in the new surroundings, to fit into the environment, she goes too far and falls ill with anorexia. Both Sandi and Yolanda end up on psychological treatment at some point. Yolanda and Carla have failed marriages and Sofia becomes pregnant out of wedlock. All the sisters struggle with typical problems of a woman in the western society, but with them, the roots of those difficulties lie in the roots of their background. They are the outcome of the conflict between the old - Dominica, and the new - America. As Barak describes it, "Growing up is a trying enough task, but growing up caught between varying and conflicting cultural expectations is , of course, even more bewildering and alienating" (160).
Yolanda, being admitted to a mental hospital, "like her sister struggles to unify a divided self", in which process her writing comes in handy: she literally "works through her identity problems by writing" (Barak, 173). Yo uses her writing to define herself through memories. It's her own coming to terms with past: "so many words. There is no end to what can be said about the world" (Alvarez, 85). The importance of writing for Yolanda is parallel to Alvarez's own. Yo is meant to be the author's alter-ego, and just as for her writing is "a combination that helps [them] move with more ease between present and past", so it is for Julia Alvarez (Mayock, 229). The act of putting down memories reflects the need to return to past and keep this past alive. Keeping the past alive is to breath new life into into, giving it new meaning. It is like building new life in fiction, which can finally become real through the author's self-picturing (both in Yolanda's and Alvarez's position). The past is not remembered as something unpleasant which has to be forgotten and got rid of. Instead, it is a place in one's heritage which calls to be preserved. That place, or rather many places hiding different memories, long to be united into one entity - connected to the present, and made sense of as a whole. Those multiple selves stemming from different cultural locations, finally find way of coming together through reaching the past and pulling it to join the now, while giving the new whole a completely new, clear picture. This recovery/building process is a characteristic feature of a bildungsroman - the growing of a character, but here also of the author.
Yolanda's memories and nightmares ultimately motivate her to go back to her home island. Being a grown-up person she experiences haunting nightmares about a cat which she rid of a kitten. What she did to the poor cat back then can be seen almost as a foreshadowing of her own lot. But because the events in the novel are written in backward order, perhaps it is better to speak of it as memory of future - to indicate link to the present. Before taking away the kitten Yo considers whether it won't bring more harm than good to the creature, thus showing care rather thoughtless selfishness. Similarly, the Garcia parents emigrate not because of a whim to live the American dream without considering all the disadvantages of reaching it, but rather out of concern for the family. Nevertheless, trying to shield the girls with the tradition veil, they cause as much turbulence in their lives as Yo does to the kitten when she hides it inside the drums. All this pulling out from the mother, evokes a sense of guilt in the girl, who then decides to return the puss where it belongs. We do not know, however, whether that succeeded as Yolanda simply throws the cat out of the window. Likewise, Yolanda's return the to the island is as vague in its outcome as the ending of the cat-in-a-coal-shed story. This event closes the Dominican chapter of the Garcia family's life for it happened just before they left for the United States. It also closes the book, implying that that chapter is definitely closed and the search completed. We read in the last paragraph of the novel: "Then we moved to the United States. The cat disappeared altogether. I saw snow." (289). We find out that the memories, which caused Yo to return to find her own self, and which caused the chase for them all the way through the girls lives, finally cease to haunt and let the self come into existence instead of them. Yolanda summarizes the rest of her life in the few remaining lines. These few lines serve as a mirror to the whole novel narrated backwards. Here however, after reaching that pivotal moment which started the struggle and which is now closing the search for identity:
The mother cat is a reminder of what Yolanda did, but it is also a symbol of the psychological fear of being taken away from her surroundings at an impressionable age. It is for this reason that Yolanda, the adult, must return to the Dominican Republic, not to understand the status of the present time of a privileged family or a culture struggling for democracy, but as a way of confronting her childhood and the past. (Luis, 848)
Dreaming in Cuban
All of the female characters in Cristina Garcia's book relate to their homeland - Cuba, differently. For one it is a source of all troubles, for another a place to seek a relief. One finds Cuba hampering their development, another will see multiple possibilities. Either way, the differences between those women, their life styles, and the influence of the new foreign world, cause the tension which leads each of them to find their selfhood in the magical world of Cuban dreams and memories. The story covers lives of three generations of del Pino women. On the first sight they all seem to be very different and drifting apart from each other as the family bonds loosen due to the immigration, but also as a result of different point of view on the history and experiences each of the women went through. Nevertheless, we learn later that there is a very strong attachment between them, and that the memories - real or not - serve as a vehicle of putting the scattered bits of common past together, thus allowing the characters to recover and discover their true selves.
Celia's secret memoir in the form of never-sent letters to her lover gives us a first glimpse on the significance of displacement. When her first and only true love leaves Cuba to return to Spain, Celia falls into despair, withdrawing herself from social life, and wasting away in bed with a broken heart. Even after she marries and has children she writes letters to Gustavo. The letters form the basis of the text, though we find out about it only at the end, for the structure of the book is multi-layered and multi-voiced, told from different perspectives of different characters, from different time and places. Yet, this distinct structure reflects the disturbed pieces of identity cast over cultural, historical and experience differences. What is recorded in Celia's letters are the most important events of her life: the eternal love for Gustavo, for Cuba and for her granddaughter Pilar. Celia must remember, she has a need on dwelling on past and recording it despite her relatives' often objection. Her husband Jorge wants her to "complete her forgetting" (Garcia, 196). He even punishes her to some extent for the memory of her previous lover by leaving Celia on his sister and mother's mercy while going away for a long work trip after they marry.
Celia's daughter Lourdes is completely detached from her mother both in physical in psychological sense in her aversion to the revolution. She emigrates with her husband Rufino and baby daughter Pilar to the United States after horrible experiences with revolution in Cuba. Their property was confiscated - we know that officially. But there is also the matter of rape and miscarriage which Lourdes never reveals to anyone. She chooses to thwart this memory at the bottom of her consciousness. Her hatred for Cuba, and quick and easy assimilation into the American living are the result of those hidden traumatizing memories. Also from the deep bottom of her consciousness, there seems to come the ghost of her father. Jorge del Pino, who like his daughter chose the American ways for most of his live, and did not return to Cuba and Celia for four years before his death, regularly visits Lourdes for talks long after his death. He reveals family secretes to her and delicate matters concerning relationships between the family members, somewhat trying to fix what has been lost. Jorge's ghost might be seen as Lourdes' product of imagination, especially when he tells his daughter that he knew about the rape. On the other hand, the ghost also visits Celia on the night of Jorge's death. It makes the reader believe the ghost is real and alive. Or perhaps the connection between Celia and Lourdes is much stronger than they both realize. Either way, those dreamy memories play a significant part in drawing the picture of troubled past and its repercussions on the present state of identity. Neither the characters, nor the reader can be certain what is real and true and what is not, nor who they really are themselves. After all, how relevant are the memories if we cannot say if they are imagined or real? Lourdes fears that her memories are meaningless, that "her rape, her baby's death were absorbed quietly by the earth, that they are ultimately no more meaningful than falling leaves on an autumn day" (Garcia, 227). But Lourdes perceives the world with memories, so she must find a way of recording all that evil. She remembers the rape through her rapist memories of his own troubled past:
She smelled his face on his wedding day, his tears when his son drowned at the park. She smelled his rotting leg in Africa, where it would be blown off his body an a moonless savanna night. She smelled him when he was old and unbathed and the flies blackened his eyes. (72)
Her memories of the then young rapist being old are one of the many accounts in the book of how memory crosses the boundaries of time and place. Lourdes' final return to Cuba helps her sort out the haunting future of the past memories, thus confirming her conviction that she has the right to despise Cuba, El Lider and everything that history has done to her and how that eventually shaped her identity.
Lourdes passes her memories selectively on Pilar and these are the only memories of Cuba she has. But are they? Celia writes in her last letter: "My granddaughter, Pilar Puente del Pino, was born today [...] She will remember everything" (245). At this moment we realise that the book we just read was Pilar's diary, which she secretly guarded from her mother in the inner pocket of her coat. It was already hinted throughout the novel by means of the first person narrative, or the omniscient narration that was Pilar's voice. She has a telepathic connection with her grandmother and believes that if she could only visit Cuba she would be able to put together the puzzles of her identity by experiencing Celia's memories. This link she creates with her roots serves as a bridge between the past and present. Similar function in discovering Pilar's individuality plays her art. Paintings can express what is inexpressible in a language - her native language which she is afraid of losing. But "painting is its own language" Pilar is thinking while struggling to find a right answer to psychiatrist question (Garcia, 59). Her obsession with art can be compared to Alvarez's character Yolanda's need to record memories in text. Pilar is trying to find the way to express herself through painting instead, she is writing in pictures. Isabel Alvarez-Borland explains: "Pilar finds that visual images communicate meaning much more effectively than does language" (46). Pilar is also more prone to be influence by painting than by text and she contemplates other artists' works: "My mother talks and talks, but I block out her words. For some reason I think about Jacoba Van Heemskerck [...] Her paintings feel organic to me, like breathing abstractions of colour" (Alvarez, 139).
The reader can never be certain whether the memories are actual accounts of facts (as meant on the novel level, rather than autobiographical), or if they are memories mingled with imagination, psychological disorder (as in the case of Garcia sisters or Pilar Puente's aunt Felicia), reflecting the self-image of the story-teller. "And there's only my imagination where our history should be" says Pilar, the narrator and history keeper of Dreaming in Cuban (Garcia, 138). How much can we trust the characters and take their memories as real for granted, where the dead live and voodoo is practised? Transience of memories adds to the novels' appeal, making the stories unique in a way that leaves space for the reader's own self-(re)discovery. Jacqueline Stefanko in her essay New Ways of Telling: Latinas' Narratives of Exile and Return says that "Alvarez's novel [...] engages in a dynamic between exile and return, narrating what cannot be narrated" (55). Dreams and memories are thus very closely related in the way Alvarez describes them. We as readers can never be certain what is real and what is magical-real.
There is insanity caused by - or else, being a result of - split identity, and the need to recover the past, which does not exist any more - which is gone: "Felicia's mind floods with thoughts, thoughts from the past, from the future, other people's thoughts" (Garcia, 76). Memories serve as a vehicle to recollect the past and to give it a meaning, on the way to understand the present and to find 'self'. Migration, Stefanko says, is a way of narrating memories “infusing the empty/open/silent spaces in history, discourses, and politics” (51). The empty-slash-open-slash-silent history is a recurrent paradigm for memory recovery in both Alvarez's and Garcia's works: seen in Yolanda's scattered pieces of “head-slash-heart-slash-soul” (Alvarez, 78), as well as in Celia's fragmented epistolary memoir and Pilar's art, in Garcia's novel.
How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents
Julia Alvarez's novel is written in a reversed chronological order, covering 30 year time period. The structure of the book facilitates reader's insight into the family history with a constant reminder of its effect on the present. Because we cannot speak of the events taking place before or after, we have the impression of sinking into each character's own world of experiences, daydreams and frustrations while trying to build their own identity. Past experiences, or rather the memory of them - which might substantially differ from the actual events, are distorted by each girl's way of looking at them and recording them in their memory. Nevertheless, memories of the past experiences, ingrained deeply at the back of the head, play a significant part in shaping of the identity.
One of those events, which have repercussions on the girls' future life is the instilled by the Catholic tradition aversion to sex. Yolanda's fear of pregnancy or eternal damnation has a huge influence on the relationship with her boyfriend Rudy. Her reluctance finally makes Rudy end the relationship, leaving her devastated. While Julie Barak finds this moment "funny, poignant and powerful" she also points out that "Yolanda's naivete and her bilingual, bicultural confusion / awareness raises the reader's consciousness" (169). Yolanda does not really have any bad past experiences concerning the private sphere, what bothers her though, is that quiet voice of contempt for foreign promiscuity lurking in the corner of her Dominican part of cultural heritage: "I would never find someone who would understand my peculiar mix of Catholicism and agnosticism, Hispanic and American styles" says Yo (99). Already before, as well as after this event, she tries to find a way of dealing with it. She writes love poems together with, and for Rudy - the poetic language bridges her idealistic view of platonic love with Rudy's sensual hints, which he has to explain more explicitly. When that does not work, ultimately leading to a break up, Yolanda cannot find any other consolation than to reach for the help of a crucifix hidden in a drawer, which she keeps as a "security blanket". Rudy shows up in her life a few years later with the intention of finally seducing Yolanda. And again, she feels this is not the right thing to do. After refusing him though, she still feels uneasy - for the time has not rid her of the humiliating feelings concerning this relationship, and reaches for the bottle of wine he left at her place. All the three attempts to deal with the troubles in men-women relationships that Yolanda will keep on encountering show how the memory of her cultural heritage leaves a strong imprint on her actions and the way she feels about them throughout the rest of her life.
Not only how, but also what is being remembered influences who the characters become. Carla remembers the naked man in a car and racism she faced at school. These are unpleasant memories - the new, that she only experiences in America, as opposed to the old - the good memories of early childhood - from back at home. This bad newness creates tension which she as an immigrant cannot get rid of. The lack of language - being an immigrant experience - forces her to suppress the fear as she cannot express herself in front of the policemen while trying to report the pervert. Her "classroom English" does not allow her to let it out in and forget. Similar situation occurs when Carla faces racism at school - something which never before happened to her, something that would only happen to "blue-black" Haitian servants but not "café-con-leche" conquistador descendants (Alvarez, 218). Mean boys at school throw stones at Carla, calling her "dirty spic" and ordering to "go back where she comes from" (153). Here the roles of the oppressed and the oppressor reverse, again creating tension between the past and present. The self of an immigrant is floating, trying to settle down, but never able to, due to the contradictory memories of the past influencing the present. In her award winning journalistic blog - published as a book Baghdad Burning - concerning issues of political exile, Riverbend (whose identity is carefully hidden) examines the effect of hostile attitudes on a displaced individual: "A refugee is someone who isn’t really welcome in any country - including their own... especially their own" (1). While she is speaking of a war refugee experiences in a different time and place than Alvarez's characters live, this also clearly applies to a feeling of displacement which fractures the identity of every immigrant worldwide regardless of the culture.
It is also interesting to note the kind of memories Sandi chose to remember, which in the long run fashion her and the relationship with her milieu. Sandi caught her father kissing the host's wife at a dinner in the restaurant rest room. After the first feelings of disgust, she quickly learns how to use it to her advantage. She feels like Mrs. Fanning owns her something and has no inhibitions in demanding what she desires at the moment, boldly asking for the dancer dolls for her and her sisters. Mrs. Fanning behaviour - when she dashes onto the stage during the Spanish performance, creating "a parody of it, a second rate combination of cultures that Sandi cannot find fulfilling" - is seen as the new foreign thing, which is confusing and bewildering in this new American world (Barak, 171).
Memories affect Sandi's future personal relationships, for the sexual images - as it is implied in the scene at Dona Charito's - have haunted her as a child and will be haunting her for long in her adult life. One day during the painting lessons, Sandi wanders off on her own to the back of the house and peeps through the window into a shed. She sees Don Jose working on his sculptures and at some point notices him being naked, "perfectly proportioned, except for one thing", who "grew big like those bulls on the ranch" (Alvarez, 250). It is those images that stuck in the Sandi's mind. And it is those images, which evoke - at such an early age - carnal scene with bulls she'd seen on her grandfather's farm. The constant recollection of memories and comparison to other such events implies that Sandi will be in a sense troubled, or defected, in her grown-up relationships.
And we do learn that Sandra finally develops psychological disorders. She has a desire to be attractive, just like typical American girls. In that desperate need to be like everyone else in the new surroundings, to fit into the environment, she goes too far and falls ill with anorexia. Both Sandi and Yolanda end up on psychological treatment at some point. Yolanda and Carla have failed marriages and Sofia becomes pregnant out of wedlock. All the sisters struggle with typical problems of a woman in the western society, but with them, the roots of those difficulties lie in the roots of their background. They are the outcome of the conflict between the old - Dominica, and the new - America. As Barak describes it, "Growing up is a trying enough task, but growing up caught between varying and conflicting cultural expectations is , of course, even more bewildering and alienating" (160).
Yolanda, being admitted to a mental hospital, "like her sister struggles to unify a divided self", in which process her writing comes in handy: she literally "works through her identity problems by writing" (Barak, 173). Yo uses her writing to define herself through memories. It's her own coming to terms with past: "so many words. There is no end to what can be said about the world" (Alvarez, 85). The importance of writing for Yolanda is parallel to Alvarez's own. Yo is meant to be the author's alter-ego, and just as for her writing is "a combination that helps [them] move with more ease between present and past", so it is for Julia Alvarez (Mayock, 229). The act of putting down memories reflects the need to return to past and keep this past alive. Keeping the past alive is to breath new life into into, giving it new meaning. It is like building new life in fiction, which can finally become real through the author's self-picturing (both in Yolanda's and Alvarez's position). The past is not remembered as something unpleasant which has to be forgotten and got rid of. Instead, it is a place in one's heritage which calls to be preserved. That place, or rather many places hiding different memories, long to be united into one entity - connected to the present, and made sense of as a whole. Those multiple selves stemming from different cultural locations, finally find way of coming together through reaching the past and pulling it to join the now, while giving the new whole a completely new, clear picture. This recovery/building process is a characteristic feature of a bildungsroman - the growing of a character, but here also of the author.
Yolanda's memories and nightmares ultimately motivate her to go back to her home island. Being a grown-up person she experiences haunting nightmares about a cat which she rid of a kitten. What she did to the poor cat back then can be seen almost as a foreshadowing of her own lot. But because the events in the novel are written in backward order, perhaps it is better to speak of it as memory of future - to indicate link to the present. Before taking away the kitten Yo considers whether it won't bring more harm than good to the creature, thus showing care rather thoughtless selfishness. Similarly, the Garcia parents emigrate not because of a whim to live the American dream without considering all the disadvantages of reaching it, but rather out of concern for the family. Nevertheless, trying to shield the girls with the tradition veil, they cause as much turbulence in their lives as Yo does to the kitten when she hides it inside the drums. All this pulling out from the mother, evokes a sense of guilt in the girl, who then decides to return the puss where it belongs. We do not know, however, whether that succeeded as Yolanda simply throws the cat out of the window. Likewise, Yolanda's return the to the island is as vague in its outcome as the ending of the cat-in-a-coal-shed story. This event closes the Dominican chapter of the Garcia family's life for it happened just before they left for the United States. It also closes the book, implying that that chapter is definitely closed and the search completed. We read in the last paragraph of the novel: "Then we moved to the United States. The cat disappeared altogether. I saw snow." (289). We find out that the memories, which caused Yo to return to find her own self, and which caused the chase for them all the way through the girls lives, finally cease to haunt and let the self come into existence instead of them. Yolanda summarizes the rest of her life in the few remaining lines. These few lines serve as a mirror to the whole novel narrated backwards. Here however, after reaching that pivotal moment which started the struggle and which is now closing the search for identity:
The mother cat is a reminder of what Yolanda did, but it is also a symbol of the psychological fear of being taken away from her surroundings at an impressionable age. It is for this reason that Yolanda, the adult, must return to the Dominican Republic, not to understand the status of the present time of a privileged family or a culture struggling for democracy, but as a way of confronting her childhood and the past. (Luis, 848)
Dreaming in Cuban
All of the female characters in Cristina Garcia's book relate to their homeland - Cuba, differently. For one it is a source of all troubles, for another a place to seek a relief. One finds Cuba hampering their development, another will see multiple possibilities. Either way, the differences between those women, their life styles, and the influence of the new foreign world, cause the tension which leads each of them to find their selfhood in the magical world of Cuban dreams and memories. The story covers lives of three generations of del Pino women. On the first sight they all seem to be very different and drifting apart from each other as the family bonds loosen due to the immigration, but also as a result of different point of view on the history and experiences each of the women went through. Nevertheless, we learn later that there is a very strong attachment between them, and that the memories - real or not - serve as a vehicle of putting the scattered bits of common past together, thus allowing the characters to recover and discover their true selves.
Celia's secret memoir in the form of never-sent letters to her lover gives us a first glimpse on the significance of displacement. When her first and only true love leaves Cuba to return to Spain, Celia falls into despair, withdrawing herself from social life, and wasting away in bed with a broken heart. Even after she marries and has children she writes letters to Gustavo. The letters form the basis of the text, though we find out about it only at the end, for the structure of the book is multi-layered and multi-voiced, told from different perspectives of different characters, from different time and places. Yet, this distinct structure reflects the disturbed pieces of identity cast over cultural, historical and experience differences. What is recorded in Celia's letters are the most important events of her life: the eternal love for Gustavo, for Cuba and for her granddaughter Pilar. Celia must remember, she has a need on dwelling on past and recording it despite her relatives' often objection. Her husband Jorge wants her to "complete her forgetting" (Garcia, 196). He even punishes her to some extent for the memory of her previous lover by leaving Celia on his sister and mother's mercy while going away for a long work trip after they marry.
Celia's daughter Lourdes is completely detached from her mother both in physical in psychological sense in her aversion to the revolution. She emigrates with her husband Rufino and baby daughter Pilar to the United States after horrible experiences with revolution in Cuba. Their property was confiscated - we know that officially. But there is also the matter of rape and miscarriage which Lourdes never reveals to anyone. She chooses to thwart this memory at the bottom of her consciousness. Her hatred for Cuba, and quick and easy assimilation into the American living are the result of those hidden traumatizing memories. Also from the deep bottom of her consciousness, there seems to come the ghost of her father. Jorge del Pino, who like his daughter chose the American ways for most of his live, and did not return to Cuba and Celia for four years before his death, regularly visits Lourdes for talks long after his death. He reveals family secretes to her and delicate matters concerning relationships between the family members, somewhat trying to fix what has been lost. Jorge's ghost might be seen as Lourdes' product of imagination, especially when he tells his daughter that he knew about the rape. On the other hand, the ghost also visits Celia on the night of Jorge's death. It makes the reader believe the ghost is real and alive. Or perhaps the connection between Celia and Lourdes is much stronger than they both realize. Either way, those dreamy memories play a significant part in drawing the picture of troubled past and its repercussions on the present state of identity. Neither the characters, nor the reader can be certain what is real and true and what is not, nor who they really are themselves. After all, how relevant are the memories if we cannot say if they are imagined or real? Lourdes fears that her memories are meaningless, that "her rape, her baby's death were absorbed quietly by the earth, that they are ultimately no more meaningful than falling leaves on an autumn day" (Garcia, 227). But Lourdes perceives the world with memories, so she must find a way of recording all that evil. She remembers the rape through her rapist memories of his own troubled past:
She smelled his face on his wedding day, his tears when his son drowned at the park. She smelled his rotting leg in Africa, where it would be blown off his body an a moonless savanna night. She smelled him when he was old and unbathed and the flies blackened his eyes. (72)
Her memories of the then young rapist being old are one of the many accounts in the book of how memory crosses the boundaries of time and place. Lourdes' final return to Cuba helps her sort out the haunting future of the past memories, thus confirming her conviction that she has the right to despise Cuba, El Lider and everything that history has done to her and how that eventually shaped her identity.
Lourdes passes her memories selectively on Pilar and these are the only memories of Cuba she has. But are they? Celia writes in her last letter: "My granddaughter, Pilar Puente del Pino, was born today [...] She will remember everything" (245). At this moment we realise that the book we just read was Pilar's diary, which she secretly guarded from her mother in the inner pocket of her coat. It was already hinted throughout the novel by means of the first person narrative, or the omniscient narration that was Pilar's voice. She has a telepathic connection with her grandmother and believes that if she could only visit Cuba she would be able to put together the puzzles of her identity by experiencing Celia's memories. This link she creates with her roots serves as a bridge between the past and present. Similar function in discovering Pilar's individuality plays her art. Paintings can express what is inexpressible in a language - her native language which she is afraid of losing. But "painting is its own language" Pilar is thinking while struggling to find a right answer to psychiatrist question (Garcia, 59). Her obsession with art can be compared to Alvarez's character Yolanda's need to record memories in text. Pilar is trying to find the way to express herself through painting instead, she is writing in pictures. Isabel Alvarez-Borland explains: "Pilar finds that visual images communicate meaning much more effectively than does language" (46). Pilar is also more prone to be influence by painting than by text and she contemplates other artists' works: "My mother talks and talks, but I block out her words. For some reason I think about Jacoba Van Heemskerck [...] Her paintings feel organic to me, like breathing abstractions of colour" (Alvarez, 139).
The image above is a Heemskerck's painting entitled Two Trees 1910, collection Gemeente Museum, Den Haag (2). The way the trees join their crowns high above the ground resembles the way Pilar connects the two different cultures she belongs to, different locations and generations. She literary branches the roots her many identities sprout from, being fully grown-up. When she finally visits Cuba, she realizes it cannot be her home. Nevertheless, Pilar knows that the cultural heritage she was endowed will always remain a part of herself.
Cristina Garcia and Julia Alvarez show us their characters' struggle to achieve the unity of self and to understand and accept the past. Memory is a chief medium in this process. Celia passes the voice of the past on her granddaughter so that the past can be preserved and recorded in the future. The future - the past, the borders blur, identities are unsteady, floating in an in-between space. Memories is the intermediary between the parts of split self. They are expressed through text and images. They must materialize in order to facilitate the growing of selfhood. Thwarted memories are the enemy of its owner, and hamper happiness. Del Pino and Garcia girls manage to come to terms with the past by returning to it and dealing with it in a dreamy-magical design, which ultimately frees their chimeras and makes the (re)discovery of self possible.
Works Cited
Alvarez-Borland, Isabel. "Displacements and Autobiography in Cuban-American Fiction." World Literature Today Winter 94, Vol. 68 Issue 1, pp. 43-48.
Alvarez, Julia. How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. London: Bloomsbury, 2004.
Barak, Julie. "Turning and Turning in the Widening Gyre: A Second Coming into Language in Julia Alvarez's How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents." MELUS Vol. 23, No. 1, Latino/a Literature (Spring, 1998), pp.159-176.
Garcia, Cristina. Dreaming in Cuban. London: Flamingo, 1992.
Luis, William. "A Search for Identity in Julia Alvarez's: How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents." Callaloo Vol. 23, No. 3, Dominican Republic Literature and Culture (Summer, 2000), pp. 839-849.
Mayock, Ellen C. "The Bicultural Construction of Self in Cisneros, Alvarez, and Santiago." Bilingual Review Sep-Dec 1998, Vol. 23 Issue 3, p223-229.
Stefanko, Jacqueline. "New Ways of Telling: Latinas' Narratives of Exile and Return." Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies Vol. 17, No. 2 (1996), pp. 50-69.
Endnotes
(1) Riverbend, Baghdad Burning 22 October, 2007. 25 May 2009.
<http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/>
(2) Heemskerck, Jacoba van. "Two Trees, 1910." 17 August 2005. Online Image. Gemeente Museum Den Haag. 25 May 2009.
<http://www.gemeentemuseum.nl/images/upload/jacoba_240px.jpg>
Cristina Garcia and Julia Alvarez show us their characters' struggle to achieve the unity of self and to understand and accept the past. Memory is a chief medium in this process. Celia passes the voice of the past on her granddaughter so that the past can be preserved and recorded in the future. The future - the past, the borders blur, identities are unsteady, floating in an in-between space. Memories is the intermediary between the parts of split self. They are expressed through text and images. They must materialize in order to facilitate the growing of selfhood. Thwarted memories are the enemy of its owner, and hamper happiness. Del Pino and Garcia girls manage to come to terms with the past by returning to it and dealing with it in a dreamy-magical design, which ultimately frees their chimeras and makes the (re)discovery of self possible.
Works Cited
Alvarez-Borland, Isabel. "Displacements and Autobiography in Cuban-American Fiction." World Literature Today Winter 94, Vol. 68 Issue 1, pp. 43-48.
Alvarez, Julia. How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. London: Bloomsbury, 2004.
Barak, Julie. "Turning and Turning in the Widening Gyre: A Second Coming into Language in Julia Alvarez's How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents." MELUS Vol. 23, No. 1, Latino/a Literature (Spring, 1998), pp.159-176.
Garcia, Cristina. Dreaming in Cuban. London: Flamingo, 1992.
Luis, William. "A Search for Identity in Julia Alvarez's: How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents." Callaloo Vol. 23, No. 3, Dominican Republic Literature and Culture (Summer, 2000), pp. 839-849.
Mayock, Ellen C. "The Bicultural Construction of Self in Cisneros, Alvarez, and Santiago." Bilingual Review Sep-Dec 1998, Vol. 23 Issue 3, p223-229.
Stefanko, Jacqueline. "New Ways of Telling: Latinas' Narratives of Exile and Return." Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies Vol. 17, No. 2 (1996), pp. 50-69.
Endnotes
(1) Riverbend, Baghdad Burning 22 October, 2007. 25 May 2009.
<http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/>
(2) Heemskerck, Jacoba van. "Two Trees, 1910." 17 August 2005. Online Image. Gemeente Museum Den Haag. 25 May 2009.
<http://www.gemeentemuseum.nl/images/upload/jacoba_240px.jpg>