Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Dreaming in Cuban, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Passion, Romance, and Marriage
Intergenerational Conflict
Religious Diversity
History and Personal Identity
Obsession and Devotion
Summary
Analysis
Pilar Puente. When Pilar arrives in Miami, she can’t believe the intense heat. She knows she can’t call Rufino’s parents because Abuela Zaida hates Lourdes and would send Pilar home, complaining that her mother can’t control her. She figures her cousin Blanquito will hide her and help her figure out how to catch a boat to Cuba. He lives in a house in Coral Gables where the entire Puente family tends to gather on weekends. On her way, Pilar stops in a church for a break from the heat. Here, she remembers getting kicked out of Catholic school and sent to a psychiatrist. The doctor asked Pilar questions about her art: why does she draw images of human mutilation? Pilar didn’t know what to say, except that her mother is driving her crazy, that she misses Cuba, and that at least painting doesn’t require translation.
The point of view shifts to teenage Pilar’s misguided attempt to flee to Cuba. Each generation is locked in conflict with the rest—Pilar with her parents’ generation, and her grandparents’ generation with their own children. Pilar feels like a misfit in her family and tries to make sense of her confusion over her identity through her art, because unlike human language, it doesn’t require translation and therefore doesn’t risk potential distortion. This points to Pilar’s struggle to navigate the split between the American and Cuban branches of her family and to figure out her own identity.
Themes
Pilar walks to Blanquito’s house and hears her Abuela Zaida, whom Lourdes claims had all her sons out of wedlock before moving to Cuba from Costa Rica, arguing with her daughter-in-law. In another room, several of Pilar’s uncles are arguing over the news headlines about Angela Davis’s trial. Beside the pool, she finds a napping Abuelo Guillermo, who made a fortune in the casino business. Eventually, a downpour begins, and Pilar starts to feel discouraged.
At this time, Angela Davis (a communist activist and academic) was on trial for murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy after firearms registered to her were used in an attempt to take over a California courtroom. She was acquitted of these charges in 1972. The prominence of Davis’s case show that issues related to a larger debate over communism persist in the wider world beyond Pilar’s divided family.
Themes
Lying on a lounge chair, Pilar thinks of her mother and reflects that if it weren’t for late-night talks with Abuela Celia, she’d be more afraid of Lourdes. Celia has explained to Pilar that her mother is sad and frustrated about things she can’t change. Pilar knows that back in Cuba, her mother was treated with respect, whereas in the U.S., neighborhood kids and merchants just think she’s loud and complaining. Pilar falls asleep on the lounge chair, and early the next morning, she’s awakened by one of her aunts.
Thanks to the special connection that Pilar has with her grandmother Celia, she perceives that Lourdes, too, is struggling with identity in her own way. Others don’t know how to interpret Lourdes’s personality, and it seems that she, too, is running away from things in her past—though neither Celia nor Pilar understands exactly what. Presumably, the aunt who wakes up Pilar will contact Lourdes and send Pilar back to New York.
Themes
Lourdes Puente. Forty days after Jorge del Pino’s burial, he reappears. Lourdes can’t see him, but she hears his voice. He thanks Lourdes for the nice burial—she even made sure Jorge had his Panama hat and cigars. Lourdes asks if her father will return. He says that he will, from time to time, and that Lourdes should look for him at twilight.
Jorge’s appearance to Celia clearly wasn’t his last. He continues to show up in Lourdes’s life, though for what duration and for what purpose is unclear. Jorge seems to believe that there is lingering family business that he must deal with.
Themes
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When Lourdes gets home, she feels like she’s losing her mind. She fears she’s “exhausted reality,” and she hates ambiguity. Lourdes summons Rufino to comfort her; she associates him with the material world and figures he’ll keep her grounded. She tells Rufino about hearing Jorge’s voice and smelling his cigar. Rufino tells Lourdes she’s tired, and he massages her feet.
Unlike her mother and sister, Lourdes isn’t naturally inclined to things like poetry, magic, and ambiguity—she prefers “reality,” which she associates with concrete things like food and sex. Because of this, her encounter with her father’s invisible, unexplained presence unsettles her, whereas Celia and Felicia took the idea of Jorge’s ghost in stride.
Themes
The next day, Lourdes throws herself into her work. She has a new trainee, Maribel Navarro, whom she coaches throughout the day to show greater initiative. Just when she’s feeling pleased with the results, she notices Maribel sneaking 50 cents into her pocket, and she fires Maribel on the spot. Lourdes’s restored self-confidence feels shattered. She walks home thinking of her father, especially the baseball games they used to attend together in Cuba. In New York, they shared a Mets obsession and celebrated in the hospital after the team won the World Series.
Lourdes mercilessly fires a promising employee for stealing an insignificant amount from her, showing her obsession with running her business in an exacting manner—anything less feels like a detraction from what she has worked hard to establish. In fact, her success is so much a part of her identity that such misbehavior feels like a personal attack.
Themes
When Lourdes and Rufino left Cuba, they didn’t know how long it would last. Lourdes was supposed to meet Rufino and his family in Miami. It was all so sudden that she packed riding crops, her wedding veil, a painting, and birdseed in her confusion. In the airport, toddler Pilar ran away and was brought back to them by a pilot. Lourdes hated living with Rufino’s family—she wanted to settle someplace cold. So they drove farther and farther north, until they reached New York.
Present business difficulties prompt Lourdes to reflect on her past. She had to flee Cuba in a hurry, indiscriminately packing pointless items, which suggests that she was emotional and perhaps regretful about leaving Cuba despite her present disdain for the country. Upon arriving in the United States, Lourdes seemingly wanted to put as much distance between herself and her country of birth as possible.
Themes
Two months before that, Lourdes had been pregnant with her second child. Out in the fields with her horse, she’d been thrown from the saddle. She stumbled back to the family’s dairy farm, borrowed a horse, and galloped desperately home to the villa. There, she found two soldiers pointing rifles at Rufino. She jumped in front of her husband and yelled ferociously at the men until they fled. Soon after, Lourdes miscarried.
Back in Cuba, Lourdes experienced trauma—her miscarriage is closely connected in her mind with the experience of being harassed by the Revolutionary soldiers. This finally gives insight into Lourdes’s hatred of the Revolution and all it represents. It also shows that Lourdes bravely defends her loved ones when they’re under threat, a characteristic that will be evident throughout her life.
Themes
Some time later, Rufino was in Havana on business when the soldiers returned. They gave Lourdes a deed declaring that the Puentes’ family estate now belonged to the revolutionary government. She ripped it up and yelled again, but this time, the taller soldier grabbed her arm. Despite her rage and attempt to run away, the two men soon had her pinned down. One of them cut off her pants, tied them over her mouth, and raped her at knifepoint. Afterward, he scratched illegible marks onto her belly with the knife.
Lourdes’s history in Cuba grows darker still, as she reflects on the details of how the Revolutionary soldiers raped her. In Lourdes’s memory, the Revolutionary government cruelly wrests away from her anything to which it claims entitlement. It becomes clearer why she feels such wrath toward Cuba and its government and has worked so hard to dissociate herself from it by starting a new life and identity in the United States.
Themes
A few days after the incident with Maribel, Lourdes looks at the various businesses in her bakery’s neighborhood. She buys some sticky dates from an Arab store and thinks about all the immigration, all the violence in other places, that has caused various nations to converge here. For her own part, Lourdes feels lucky. She feels that moving to the United States has given her the chance to redefine herself. She loves winter and its protective layers most of all. She no longer desires returning to Cuba.
Moving to the United States gives Lourdes the chance to cleanly separate herself from her traumatic past—or so she thinks. Everything is different here, from the government system to the climate, allowing Lourdes to make a fresh start for herself.
Themes
As Lourdes approaches home, she smells Jorge’s cigar again. He asks Lourdes if she’s forgotten him. Lourdes admits that she thought she’d imagined him the first time because she misses him. She thinks back to a few weeks ago, flying to Miami to fetch her runaway daughter. The smell of the ocean reminded Lourdes of Celia. She can still remember her mother saying, “I will not remember her name.” Now, she cries and tells Jorge that she doesn’t know what to do—Pilar hates her. Jorge says this isn’t true: Pilar just hasn’t learned how to love her yet.
Challenging Lourdes’s belief that she can separate herself completely from her past, Jorge continues to haunt Lourdes. Lourdes feels pain regarding her relationship with her daughter, and despite the tension between them, Lourdes doesn’t want the rejection she experienced from her mother to be repeated in Pilar’s life. Jorge predicts that there’s still hope for their relationship.
Themes
