scholarly journals The problematic of identity-memory in the Cuban-American fiction of Cristina García and Achy Obejas

2021 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 93-102
Author(s):  
Mónica Fernández Jiménez
Keyword(s):  
Second Generation ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Cristina Garcia ◽  
American Fiction ◽  
Cuban American ◽  
Achy Obejas ◽  
Identity Conflicts ◽  
Cristina García ◽  
American Authors

Cuban-American authors Cristina García and Achy Obejas denote in their fictional works concerns regarding the fragmented memory of second-generation Cuban-American immigrants. Owing to the turbulent political origin of this exiled community, the characters of these works have identity conflicts related to the difficulty of accessing the historical memory of their ancestors’ land and community. However, as the narratives progress, the source of these conflicts proves to be the nationalist approach to identification which they end up challenging by relating themselves to history, memory, and identity in alternative postnational ways. The protagonists of these works, thus, contest traditional postulates in the study of memory like those of Maurice Halbwachs, who believed that the historical memory of a nation had an important role in determining the individual’s identity.  

scholarly journals Lengua(je)s, branding, e identidad en la Gran Cuba: Dreaming in Cuban de Cristina García

2018 ◽  
pp. 217
Author(s):  
Francisca Aguilo Mora
Keyword(s):  
Cristina Garcia ◽  
Dreaming In Cuban ◽  
Achy Obejas ◽  
Las Mujeres ◽  
Cristina García

Las metáforas conceptuales de puentes, fronteras, y otros espacios intermedios –las cuales forman lo que podríamos denominar ‘la ontología del guion’—prevalecen en las lecturas críticas de la producción artística de las hijas de la diáspora caribeña hispanófona en los EEUU. No obstante, en este artículo sostengo que las formas lingüísticas y los patrones discursivos que tienen lugar con frecuencia en estos textos no sugieren una carga de identidad lingüística ni el estado de hallarse entre lenguas y naciones, sino que crean una estética de la multiplicidad. A pesar de estar escritas mayoritariamente en inglés, estas obras se agrupan con una tradición literaria del Caribe hispanófono que cuestiona nociones estructuralistas de lengua e identidad, y perspectivas modernas de nación(alidad). En este artículo, expongo la necesidad de reconsiderar las conceptualizaciones de lengua y género en las construcciones de identidades locales, globales, y posnacionales en la Gran Cuba. Analizo cómo escritoras como Cristina García (y Achy Obejas, entre otras) reinterpretan la lengua a través de cruce lingüísticos, formando así una comunidad grancaribeña de práctica literaria que cuestiona los límites discursivos de las definiciones tradicionales de ‘lo americano’, ‘lo cubano’, ‘lo caribeño’, y lo cubano-americano’. Por medio de su branding lingüístico y sus componentes temáticos, estas novelas desestabilizan los imaginarios nacionales y archivos culturales predominantes tanto en la isla caribeña como en los EEUU, a la vez que problematizan el rol históricamente silenciado de las mujeres (escritoras), con un claro propósito de adquisición de poder. 

Postmemories of Migration: Cuban Exile and Poetics of Latinidad in Jennine Capó-Cruet’s Make Your Home Among Strangers

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-55
Author(s):  
Aarón Aguilar-Ramírez
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
First Century ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
Cuban American ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Ethnic Memory ◽  
The U.S

Abstract Taking Juan Flores’s premise of historical memory and lived experience to foundational to U.S. latinidad as a starting point, this article asks how twenty-first century second-generation Latina writing intervenes in contemporary understandings of U.S. latinidad as a pan-ethnic cultural field. It analyzes the narrative techniques, structures, and conventions through which contemporary Latinx writing engages ethnic memory and lived experience, considering how, and whether, those narrative conventions coalesce into a “poetics of latinidad.” Specifically, this article analyzes Jennine Capó Crucet’s Make Your Home Among Strangers (2015), a novel comprising two interlaced storylines that animate the categories “lived experience” and “historical memory.” The novel intertwines its protagonist, Lizet’s, lived experience as a second-generation Cuban-American and the fictionalized re-rendering of the Elián Gonzalez case, a historical event that has proved an inflection point for Cuban-American exile identity in the U.S., destabilizing Cubans’ status as an “exceptional” community in the U.S. Latinx migrant imaginary. Thus, this article argues that Capó-Crucet’s novel fashions a poetics of latinidad in key ways. Engaging Marianne Hirsch’s concept of “postmemory,” it analyzes how the interwoven stories of Lizet and Ariel Hernández (the fictionalized Elián González) repurpose the role of historical memory toward the narrative intelligibility of the second generation’s lived experience in the U.S. while recuperating and memorializing the first-generation’s experience of exile. It then situates this novel within a burgeoning corpus of twenty-first century Latina college narratives, including Patricia Cardoso’s Real Women Have Curves (2002), Meliza Bañalez’s Life is Wonderful, People are Terrific (2015), and Gabby Rivera’s Juliet Takes a Breath (2016). These texts rely on postmemory to address the experiences of second-generation Latina college students; Capó-Crucet’s novel articulates a poetics of latinidad in this intertextual framework.

Dictatorship, Machismo, and the Cuban Exile Drama in a Tragicomic Mode: Cristina García’s King of Cuba

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-142
Author(s):  
Veronica Tatiana Popescu
Keyword(s):  
Cristina Garcia ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Cuban American ◽  
Fidel Castro ◽  
Sensitive Topics ◽  
Florida Straits ◽  
American Author ◽  
Cristina García

"Dictatorship, Machismo, and the Cuban Exile Drama in a Tragicomic Mode: Cristina García’s King of Cuba. Three years before the death of Fidel Castro, Cuban American author Cristina García published a fictional account of the Cuban dictator’s death in a darkly funny and sentimental story of intertwined destinies, ironies of fate, machismo, failure and suffering. With El Comandante and a fellow octogenarian émigré as protagonists, García launches into a fictional exploration of Cuban masculinity, machismo, the dictator’s fate, vanity, and failure. Written in what I will argue is a tragicomic mode, balancing the tragic and the comic, the horrendous and the laughable, the pitiful and the ridiculous, the novel reflects different perspectives on sensitive topics for Cubans on both sides of the Florida Straits, challenging preconceived ideas and inviting the reader to reflect on the relativity of truth. Keywords: Fidel Castro, dictatorship, machismo, Cuban American community, satire, tragicomic mode "

scholarly journals Oppression and Suppression: The Lingering Controversy Surrounding the Meaning of the Battle of Okinawa in Japanese Memory

Elements ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Weija Vicky Shen
Keyword(s):  
Second Generation ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
War Trauma ◽  
Identity Conflict ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
War Survivors ◽  
Identity Conflicts ◽  
Battle Of Okinawa ◽  
The Relationship

Historical facts are sealed, but the memory of a particular history changes from one generation to the next. The highly politicized nature of historical memory determined that only one interpretation can be right at a time. Yet when individual memories contradict what is taught publicly, such gap creates an identity conflict within generations of war survivors. Such is the conventionality of Okinawa’s unique history. Focusing on the relationship between “memory” and “identity,” Countering this conception is the suppressed memories of individuals whose recollection challenged the conventional portrayal of victimhood. Drawing on the second-generation war survivor Medoruma Shun’s fictional novella Droplets as primary document, this paper explores the conflict of identities of Okinawans from a perspective of “memory.” Emphasizing the consequence of prolonged war trauma created by the lapses in public and private memories, the paper points to the bridge of the two as a potential gateway to resolve not only identity conflicts within individual war survivors, but collective healing as a group in reconciliation with its own pastcrimes.

Generations

2019 ◽  
pp. 51-71
Author(s):  
Lisa Woolfork
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Lost Cause ◽  
African American Authors ◽  
Black Life ◽  
A Site ◽  
Post Civil Rights ◽  
American Authors

This essay explores the ways in which African American authors of that era reclaim the slave past as a site of memory for a nation eager to forget. Lucille Clifton’s Generations (1976), Alex Haley’s Roots (1976), Ishmael Reed’s Flight to Canada (1976), and Octavia Butler’s Kindred (1979) are the chapter’s main focus. These works resist the tide of historical amnesia and “lost cause” mythology that would minimize or relegate the enslaved to mere props in the larger Civil War drama of rupture and reconciliation. By centering the stories of the enslaved as ancestral foundations of post-civil rights black life, these authors promote a model for historical memory and genealogy that elevates black resilience.

Here in Berlin by Cristina García

Hispania ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 103 (1) ◽  
pp. 142-143
Author(s):  
Ada Ortúzar-Young
Keyword(s):  
Cristina Garcia ◽  
Cristina García

The Fall of the Patriarchs

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Harford Vargas
Keyword(s):  
Second Generation ◽  
Character Traits ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Theatrical Production ◽  
Cuban American ◽  
Freedom Fighters ◽  
Similar Character ◽  
The Revolution

This chapter examines the figure of the patriarch as dictator, analyzing how Cristina García’s King of Cuba interrogates the two main characters’ heteropatriarchal and hypermasculinist hero narratives. They are depicted as foil characters whose many similar character traits foil their imaginations of themselves as polar opposites and reveals their similar investments in the regime of heteropatriarchy; at the same time, the novel foils both characters’ desires to die heroically, thereby demythologizing the celebratory narratives of the revolution and the freedom fighters that have dominated in Cuba and in Miami, respectively. It further demonstrate how the novel incorporates notes, vignettes, and theatrical production to create a resolver aesthetic that captures the creative forms of survival and strategic negotiation of characters who survive amid scarcity on the island. The chapter ends by focusing on marginalized, defiant second-generation Cuban American daughters of the conservative exile generation who are artist figures so as to illuminate an alternative articulation of revolution and art in the service of decolonial critique.

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