Rating: 
Summary: Very evocative and accurate depiction of Cuba's fate
Review: A Cuban myself, I was deeply touched by this book when I first read it. Garcia masterly captures the inner conflicts that all her character experience when trying to find a point in this crazy family separation and bigotry. There are very subtle contrasts between the diverse forms of religions that presently coexist in Cuba; also, they play an important metaphorical element when analyzed in a political context. "El lider," as the author refers to Fidel Castro, plays a remote, mythical element, so distant, yet so tangibly close to the life of every Cuban, commanding, exerting his hypnotic power to enthral the masses in hysterical ecstacy. The story flows with ease and makes occasional transitions in time, going from the discursive moment to the past through Celia's letters, making a powerful cohesion of present past and future; attempting to find coherence in this shameful historical accident that segmented families and a whole culture in the sake of an ideology....
Rating: 
Summary: Ending not as good as I expected.
Review: As I started this book out it was a page turner, I just couldn't put it down at all, I had to then. So I did and then picked it up a few days later, and read and read. It is hard to keep track of all of the characters in the beginning, but i was used to that by reading 100 yrs of solitude at the same time. haha well, I thought it was an interesting book, but the ending was not as grand as I expected it to see. Antoher worthwhile book on how Cubans/latin americans imigrate and adapt to new lives and how their families are spread apart.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful and engrosing
Review: Beautifully written and engrosing story. Definately a must read.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting portrait of a Cuban and American family
Review: Dreaming in Cuban depicts the personal and political tensions of a family divided geographically and politically across Cuba and the US. The feeling of dislocation and disconnection/connection between the American and the Cuban sides of the family is convincingly portrayed through the voices and narratives of various family members of different generations, most of whom are women. Although Garcia provides us with some very pretty prose and well-drawn incidents, the novel suffers structurally from its fragmented style and leaves the reader unenlightened and unsatisfied by the end. Although I enjoyed Dreaming in Cuban, I felt the experience was marred by the lack of closure and by the lack of being hit by any fresh insight despite the well-drawn images and relationships. I also thought that some - although not all - of the mysticism concerning Santeria was unconvincing and detracted from the novel's strength in depicting the personal relationships of the parents and children and grandchildren. However, Garcia should be credited for effectively portraying the tensions between a family divided across political, geographical, cultural and generational borders and for doing so with some very pretty prose and humor.For readers looking for a similar kind of read, I would strongly recommend The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros.
Rating:
Summary: What does it really mean to be Cuban?
Review: Dreaming in Cuban is a superb novel which delves into the themes of family, history, culture, and self-definition. The novel focuses on one Cuban family that has become divided. Celia, the matriarch of the family, lives in Cuba as a loyal supporter of Castro. Her two daughters have both estranged themselves from the family and have consequently lost their sense of Cuban identity. Lourdes is a fervent opponent of the Castro regime and has moved to the United States in an attempt to redefine her identity. Felicia turns to santeria, a cultish religion stemming from West Africa. Both daughters have abandoned a close relationship with their mother and each other in order to escape their Cuban heritage. The only hope for re-uniting this family is Lourdes' daughter Pilar, but does she possess the ability to discover what it means to be Cuban...? This is an excellent story, full of vivid imagery, which delves into complicated family dynamics and cultural identity. You will be hooked from the first page and left with a greater appreciation of your own roots.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful
Review: Garcia creates interesting characters that all relate to the situations of being Cuban and Cuban American.
Rating:
Summary: political standing in the book
Review: Garcia delineates the Cuban experience of three generations of women. The book presents the Castro supporter and the anti-Castro supporters trying to find thier bondage in the family. The novel ends with Pilar, the grand daughter of Castro supporter Celia, leaving Cuba as part of the old world when she realizes that she belongs in the new world of America. Garcia implicitly portrays that the characters gather strength by accepting the old world as part of them. Cuba is a place of romance where they can reminisce about their youth. However, the setting is that of poverty with only the basic necessities for living.
Rating:
Summary: well-rounded characters
Review: Garcia's novel is highly descriptive with central themes of abandonment and destructive human relations. Each of the characters has a richly drawn history and character psychology. The novel intersects the political with the universal, creating a juxtaposition of elements that only serves to enhance the novel as a whole. I enjoyed the novel but was left somewhat unfulfilled at the end due to a lack of concrete or implied closure.
Rating:
Summary: I was captivated by the memories of each character.
Review: Having just returned from a two week visit to Cuba, this book captures the poetry and romantic vision many Cubans have of love and life. Every character in the book suffers as much in his or her visions and dreams as in his or her existence. Lourdes, whose name means heavy in French,tries hardest to break out of a visionary's existence just as her sister Felicia succumbs to it. Celia drowns in it.I recommend this book to dreamers and enchanters everywhere. *as a French Canadian, it was funny to read the one-liner the author included about us!
Rating:
Summary: Lyrical Madness
Review: Here is a truly unforgettable book. I was entranced from the very first sentence: "Celia del Pino, equipped with binoculars and wearing her best housedress and drop pearl earrings, sits in her wicker swing guarding the north coast of Cuba." From that moment on, I was drawn as surely into this book as the tides in the sea that Celia is guarding. "Dreaming in Cuban" tells the story of the Cuban Revolution from the point of view of three generations of women: the above-mentioned Celia, the grandmother; her daughters, Felicia and Lourdes; and Lourdes' own daughter, Pilar. Each of the three older women, and perhaps Pilar, a 20-ish New York artist, is quite totally mad. Thus we see and hear and feel the revolution from the hallucinatory perceptions of Celia, who worships El Lider (Castro) with ferocity; Felicia, who is torn between old Cuba--its superstitions, its voodoo, its passion--and the modern Cuba, where she is sentenced to a work camp; and Lourdes, who has escaped to Brooklyn and proudly owns the Yankee Doodle Bakery. There is violence, murder, passion, birth and death in this book, but all told in a sort of lyrical mist, so that the reader feels the torpid heat of the Cuban day, the gentle warmth of the sea, and the breezes that stir the palms. All is dreamlike, which makes the reality of modern Cuba almost impossible to grasp. As one of the main characters says toward the end of the book: "Cuba is a peculiar exile...an island-colony. We can reach it by a thirty-minute charter flight from Miami, yet never reach it at all." And yet, after reading this incredible book, I feel for the first time that I have some understanding of that small island nation. Or maybe it is all a dream.
|
