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
It’s 1980, and Celia is going through Felicia’s old belongings. She recalls Felicia as a little girl, collecting shells on the beach before the tidal wave. Her daughter had been buried as a santera, a last request which Celia couldn’t refuse. Now Celia goes for an ocean swim wearing Felicia’s old, sheer bathing suit.
The fact that Celia was willing to respect Felicia’s wishes of being buried as a santera proves that she truly loved and respected her daughter despite Celia’s skepticism of Santería. Now, Celia is clearly looking for ways to remember and identify with Felicia following her daughter’s death. Shells are an ongoing symbol of the unavoidability of fate, so the fact that Celia thinks about Felicia collecting shells implies that Celia recognizes, on some level, that her daughter was fated to have a tragic life. Meanwhile, the ocean’s dual symbolism of hope and tragedy implies that Celia is struggling to find optimism in the wake of Felica’s death.
Themes
Pilar and Lourdes arrive in Havana. Their taxi driver tells them that a busload of asylum-seekers have crashed the gates of the Peruvian embassy, making trouble for El Líder. Lourdes is barely listening, taking in the decay of the city. But Pilar admires the brightly colored houses and ornate balconies. Ever since the incident in Morningside Park, Pilar can hear bits of people’s thoughts and catch glimpses of the future. It’s unpredictable, and the perceptions are never given in context.
While returning to Cuba confirms Lourdes’s worst suspicions about it, Pilar discovers a new world, even as she continues to adjust to new mental symptoms—perceptions that, in contrast to her grandmother and aunt, she seems to regard as a special power rather than a sign of illness.
Themes
As they travel the coastal highway toward Celia’s house, Pilar looks at the ocean and gets glimpses of shipwrecks and drownings. When they reach Abuela Celia’s house, Pilar notices how neglected it looks. They go inside, and Lourdes recoils from Celia’s bedside photo of El Líder. Pilar finds her grandmother sitting on her porch swing, still in the worn bathing suit. They embrace.
Pilar’s long-awaited reunion with her grandmother is different than she’s long imagined—Celia is much older and weaker than Pilar thought she’d be. Lourdes, meanwhile, is repulsed by Celia’s unabashed devotion to Castro, once again demonstrating how differing political allegiances can cause conflict among loved ones.
Themes
Lourdes and Pilar bathe Celia and wash her hair. Celia says nothing as Lourdes scolds her that she could’ve died of pneumonia. Pilar notices Celia’s drop pearl earrings and remembers playing with them as a baby. They put Celia to bed, and Pilar catches glimpses of her sorrowful dreams.
Lourdes and Pilar care for Celia, a role reversal that the long passage of years has brought about. Though Celia rejected Lourdes as a young child, it seems Lourdes is unable to treat her mother with the same cruelty.
Themes
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Lourdes huffs about the photo of El Líder placed over Jorge’s photo and flings the picture into the ocean. Pilar just watches the ocean, thinking that Cuba is best approached by sea. Though it can be reached by a 30-minute flight from Miami, one might never reach it at all. Lourdes and Pilar walk to town and sample sugarcane from a street vendor. Lourdes keeps complaining loudly about things, indignant that the people have been “brainwashed” by communism and don’t know what they’re missing, but Pilar is entranced by the colors, the old-fashioned cars, and the bustle.
Lourdes and Pilar continue to find Cuba more or less what they’d each expected based on their respective outlooks: Lourdes finds a place that foolishly worships Castro and rejects capitalism, while Pilar finds a complex, mysterious place filled with novel delights.
Themes
That night, Pilar can’t sleep; she settles into the wicker swing beside Celia. Celia begins telling her stories of her childhood, of traveling to Havana for the first time, and of falling in love with Gustavo much later. She says that she knew all about Pilar before she was born, but Jorge said one couldn’t remember the future. Celia tells Pilar that women who outlive their daughters are orphans and must rely on their granddaughters to save them.
Celia confides in Pilar, seeing in her the fulfillment of her hopes for the family and a fresh start after her failures to connect with her children’s generation. In their own ways, both Celia and Pilar hope that the other will answer all their respective questions about their places in the world.
Themes
Lourdes. Lourdes sees destruction and decay everywhere she looks, and it pains her. Last night, her nephew Ivanito ate six plates full of food at the tourist hotel—the best food is reserved for the tourists or for export to Russia, and Ivanito never sees such fare at his boarding school. Lourdes disdains the “armchair socialists” who vacation in Cuba.
Lourdes continues to find Cuba to be the nightmare she’d expected, a place that oppresses its own citizens and that outsiders foolishly idealize. She’s cynical toward the “armchair socialists” that make up Cuba’s tourism, as she sees them as perpetuating harmful Revolutionary sentiments without suffering the effects in their daily lives.
Themes
After dinner, Pilar had danced sloppily with Ivanito. The boy was a wonderful dancer, and Lourdes couldn’t resist taking a turn, instinctively remembering the moves. A crowd gathered to watch, and they applauded. The next day, Lourdes drives along the coast, remembering her childhood journeys with Jorge and her honeymoon at the Hotel Internacional. She is depressed by the decay of the towns and wishes she could explain it all to Ivanito, who has no future here.
Lourdes’s return to Cuba awakens her own passions, like her latent dancing talent. But mostly, she sees Cuba’s failures and lack of a future. She feels drawn to her young nephew, as if he’s the son she never had, and she longs for better opportunities for the boy.
Themes
Lourdes drives to the old Puente ranch, which now appears to be a home for the elderly. This estate is where Lourdes lost her second child. Her biggest fear is that her baby’s death, and her rape, are meaningless and forgotten.
Lourdes revisits the place where her biggest heartbreaks occurred, but it’s unclear if she finds what she seeks there. She longs for some kind of resolution and fears it’s impossible.
Themes
Ivanito. Ivanito feels confused and overwhelmed these days, dreaming of escaping somewhere unknown on a horse. He and Pilar talk a lot. He confides everything about his childhood: his mother, Mr. Mikoyan, seeing his father for the first and only time, his dream of being on the radio. He never knew he had so many things to say.
For the first time in Ivanito’s life, he has an audience in his cousin Pilar. She’s willing to hear everything he has to say and is ready to accept him on his own terms—treatment he’s never received from the other adults in his life.
Themes
Pilar has brought a copy of the I Ching and invites everybody in the family to ask it a question. Lourdes asks, “Will I see justice done?” She sounds angry, but she looks at Ivanito with kindness—she’s taken a liking to him. Lourdes buys him gifts and hugs him a lot, calling him her sweet boy. She tells him about all the things he could achieve in America. Ivanito tells Lourdes that he wants to be a translator for world leaders, but she doesn’t listen.
The I Ching, an ancient Chinese classic, is a divination text, so it’s significant that Pilar takes the role of telling others’ futures—even though she’s doing it for fun, it hints at a growing awareness of her spiritual identity. Meanwhile, Pilar views Ivanito as the son she lost and longs to make a better life for him, no matter what he wants.
Themes
Ivanito hasn’t seen Abuela Celia so happy in a long time. She and Pilar spend hours together, and Pilar is painting her portrait. Pilar seems to have brought Celia back to life, and Celia keeps saying that everything will be better now. When it’s Celia’s turn to question the I Ching, she asks, “Should I give myself to passion?” The I Ching gives an ambiguous answer, but Celia doesn’t seem to mind.
Pilar’s presence rejuvenates Celia, reassuring her that everything is taking a turn for the better. Celia’s question is ambiguous, but in her happiness, she seems to have come full circle in her life and seeks a new outlet for passion, which has failed her in the past.
Themes
Later Pilar asks Ivanito to take her to Herminia’s house. She needs to learn the truth about herself, she explains. Herminia seems to have been expecting them. She tells them everything about Felicia’s life and then welcomes Pilar into the candle- and incense-filled room, calling her “daughter.”
It seems that Pilar may take Felicia’s place in the family’s connection to Santería. This seems to have been fated for her all along, despite her distance from Cuba and her long indifference to religion. This suggests that spirituality is an irrepressible aspect of a person.
Themes
Pilar. Pilar asks Celia how she wants to be remembered. Celia jokes that Pilar should paint her like a flamenco dancer, in a flared red dress. But then she grows sad and asks Pilar if she’s going to stay this time. Pilar paints a whole series of watercolor sketches of her grandmother, mostly in blue. Pilar never realized how many blues there were. Celia likes the portraits, but she wonders if she truly looks so unhappy in real life.
Pilar paints Celia as if Celia has absorbed the many blues of the ocean she’s studied so avidly throughout her life. Given that the ocean symbolizes both hope and tragedy, it seems that Pilar perceives Celia’s inner life as one defined by both heartbreak and resilience. But Pilar also paints the sadness she perceives in Celia, revealing her interpretation of the old photographs of Celia earlier in the story—sorrow, she thinks, has outweighed joy in her grandmother’s life.
Themes
Celia talks to Pilar as Pilar paints, telling her about Cuba—that is used to be “a parody of a country,” without enough work for everyone and sugar as its only product. Her great-aunt Alicia, she explains, gave her progressive ideas and helped Celia understand that “freedom […] is nothing more than the right to a decent life.” Lourdes interjects with complaints about political prisoners, land theft, and persecution of Catholics, but Celia never replies.
Celia sees freedom very differently than Lourdes and Pilar do. Whereas Celia believes that freedom ends at the ability to live “a decent life,” Lourdes has seen some of the ugly sides of the revolutionary government. Further, Pilar has grown up with more advantages and much greater freedom than she could have found in Cuba. The generations seem to be unable of finding common ground on this issue.
Themes
Lourdes has been making such a nuisance of herself in front of the neighbors that the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution starts complaining to Celia, but Celia assures them that Lourdes will be gone soon. Pilar wishes she could stay longer, though she admits that conditions in Cuba are tougher than she had expected. She wonders how life might have been different if she had grown up here. She asks Celia if she can paint whatever she wants in Cuba. Celia explains that Pilar can’t paint anything attacking the state, because dissent is a luxury that Cuba can’t yet afford.
Pilar’s conception of Cuba continues to shift as she considers that she can’t be the kind of painter she wants to be here, and that she’s already become in the United States. In Cuba, a painting like the punk Lady Liberty would get her in much more trouble than just ticking off her mother’s customers. Celia accepts such dissent as simply a matter of life under the Revolution, which she believes is improving conditions for everyone overall—and it’s therefore worth enduring certain repressions.
Themes
Celia gives Pilar the box of letters she wrote to Gustavo but never sent. She also shows Pilar Gustavo’s photo. Pilar has begun dreaming in Spanish, and she feels like she’s changing, a certain magic working through her. She feels instinctively drawn to Cuba’s vegetation and architecture and the ocean. She doesn’t want to lose it or her grandmother. But now, she knows that she belongs much more to New York than to Cuba. How can she tell Celia this?
Even as Pilar feels more drawn to Cuba and realizes how Cuban she really is, she also realizes that she’ll never truly belong here. She had always believed that Celia would give her answers about herself, and in her own way, Celia believed the same of Pilar. But neither generation can give the other what it ultimately seeks, which suggests that each individual’s sense of identity and purpose is something they must find within themselves.
Themes
Lourdes. When Lourdes hears about the refugees at the Peruvian embassy, she drives to Havana. A Jeep pulls up in front of the embassy, and El Líder steps out. Lourdes had always expected to curse at him in a moment like this, but now that it’s here, her mouth feels dry. She wishes she could put a gun to his head and make him feel afraid. She finally takes a deep breath and yells, “Murderer!” Some soldiers move toward Lourdes, but El Líder stops them. He tells the assembled defectors that he won’t hold them in Cuba against their will. Then he gets back in his Jeep and drives away.
Lourdes finally gets a chance to vent her rage at Castro. To her, he represents everything she suffered in Cuba: the loss of her baby, her land, and her own innocence and dignity. But it’s not clear that this climactic moment offers Lourdes the catharsis she seeks.
Themes
Celia walks along the beach with Lourdes, Pilar, and Ivanito. Lourdes goes back inside the house and smokes a cigar, thinking that she can’t keep her promise to Jorge, to tell Celia that he’s sorry for sending her away. Lourdes just keeps thinking of her mother’s words to her in infancy—“I will not remember her name.” That night, Lourdes dreams of defectors.
Lourdes doubts she can fully forgive her mother. They are just too different, and the chasm between them, which began in Lourdes’s childhood, is too deep.
Themes
Very early the next morning, Lourdes wakes Ivanito. She’s laid out clothes for him and packed him a bag. They speed to Havana. At the Peruvian embassy, people clutch boxes and suitcases and push at the gates. She gives Ivanito $200 and a message written in English, identifying himself as a Cuban refugee and naming Lourdes as his sponsor. She promises that she’ll come and fetch Ivanito from Peru or wherever he is sent, and she’ll bring him back to Brooklyn. When Ivanito asks about his Abuela, Lourdes doesn’t answer—she just urges him to go.
Instead of finding closure with Celia or with Cuba at large, Lourdes attempts to help Ivanito, who has become a surrogate son, escape to a better life. It’s not clear whether this is what Ivanito really wants, or if it’s just Lourdes’s projection. She may be hoping that Ivanito will escape Cuba in a way that she, hampered by grief, has never fully been able to do.
Themes
Pilar. When Celia discovers that Ivanito and Lourdes are gone, Pilar borrows Herminia’s car, and they rush to Havana. Celia tells Pilar that families are no longer loyal to their roots. The ocean has always been a comfort to her, but now it just separates her from her children.
For Celia, the ocean has always symbolized peace, but its healing presence also has a more sinister aspect as a literal and symbolic divide from her loved ones. She senses that her family is disintegrating around her as yet another grandchild is carried beyond her reach.
Themes
In Havana, they walk to the cordoned-off Peruvian embassy and search for Ivanito. People start fighting, a policeman smashes someone’s head, and rocks start flying. Pilar gets hit by a rock and forced within the gates by the restless crowd. She hears that this morning’s arrivals have already been put on a plane to Lima, and another one will leave soon. Finally, she spots Ivanito and embraces him.
Pilar ostensibly tries to rescue Ivanito for her grandmother’s sake, but it’s not clear that’s actually what she wants to do for him. Her experience in Cuba has shown her that maybe there really isn’t much opportunity here for a promising young person.
Themes
When Pilar rejoins Celia, she lies, claiming she couldn’t find Ivanito and that he must have already left on a plane. She hugs her grandmother and no longer smells her comforting scent of violet water.
In the end, Pilar cannot bring herself to stop Ivanito from fleeing Cuba and betraying her grandmother. Her grandmother, in turn, no longer seems like the same woman for whom Pilar has longed over the years. This suggests that neither a place nor a relationship can ultimately give someone meaning—it’s something each person can only determine for themselves.
Themes
Celia. Celia walks out of her house toward the beckoning blue of the ocean. She takes off her shoes and stands in the cool sand, feeling planted there like a palm. She realizes she’s never been more than 100 yards off Cuba’s coast and remembers her old dream of sailing to Spain. She steps into the ocean and pretends she’s a soldier on a mission, letting herself be submerged, “[breathing] through her wounds.” She takes off her pearl earrings and releases them into the water.
It's not clear how much later this passage occurs in the story, but since Celia is alone, it would seem to take place after Lourdes, Pilar, and Ivanito have all left Cuba. It’s also left ambiguous whether she intends to end her life in the ocean. She does let go of the passion that has defined her life—symbolized by the pearl earrings—and is now untethered from the ties, both good and bad, that have constrained her all her life. She is absorbed into the ocean, the force that has been the backdrop of her whole life.
Themes
