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
On a rainy day, Celia picks up her twin granddaughters, Luz and Milagro, from a field trip to the Isle of Pines. She feels as if she’s always been waiting for someone—it started in 1934, before she married Jorge. She was called Celia Almeida back then. She worked in a prestigious Havana department store called El Encanto, selling American cameras. One day, Gustavo Sierra de Armas, a married lawyer from Spain, wanted to buy a Kodak. After that, he kept returning to Celia’s counter, bringing her gifts such as drop pearl earrings.
The story shifts from the present back to Celia’s earlier history, as she recalls her relationship with her first lover, Gustavo. The fact that Celia still feels like she’s waiting for someone so many years later suggests that she’d had a lifelong obsession with Gustavo which likely impacted her marriage to Jorge.
Themes
After Gustavo returned to Spain, Celia was heartbroken. She bought potions at the botánicas and then took to her bed for eight months, weakening and appearing to shrink. Neighbors brought advice and food. Finally, her great-aunt Alicia brought in a santera, who saw the “wet landscape” in Celia’s palm and promised that Celia would survive.
Celia’s obsession with Gustavo is so strong that his departure completely devastates her. Celia employs elements of Santería to help her survive her heartbreak, culminating in the palm-reading which connects her survival to the strength she’ll draw from a life lived by the ocean.
Themes
While Celia was housebound, Jorge del Pino, 14 years older than Celia, began courting her. He’d known Celia since she was a child. He told Celia that she must “write to that fool,” and that if Gustavo didn’t respond, then Celia must marry him instead. So Celia did. In fact, for the next 25 years, she wrote a letter to Gustavo on the 11th day of every month, then stored the letters in a chest beneath her bed. She never took the drop pearl earrings off.
Celia’s hidden letters to Gustavo suggest that she already knows their love affair isn’t meant to survive over the long term. Yet the fact that she writes the letters at all (and continues to wear the earrings he gave her) suggests that she can’t let go of the obsession either. Jorge’s insistence that she “write to that fool”—a gesture he hoped would put an end to the affair—only intensified it.
Themes
Celia and her twin granddaughters, Luz and Milagro, hitch a ride to the house on Palmas Street. When they get there, Felicia waves at them frantically from an upstairs window. She’s wearing a nightgown and has just made coconut ice cream, a ritual ever since her husband left in 1966. Felicia tends to have delusions after heavy rains, and they always follow a similar pattern.
Felicia is afflicted with mental illness throughout the book, which seems to be connected to trauma she’s experienced in her former marriage, although the nature of that trauma isn’t yet revealed. Her illness manifests in certain obsessions that are inexplicable (for now), like making and eating coconut ice cream.
Themes
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That night, Celia lies awake in Felicia’s house. The house used to belong to Celia’s mother-in-law, Berta Arango del Pino, and it’s full of unhappy memories. When Celia returned from her honeymoon with Jorge, Berta called Celia a harlot, and things never improved. While Jorge traveled, Berta and her daughter, Ofelia, excluded Celia from meals, giving her poor scraps instead. When Celia tried making them a delicious stew, Berta flung the pot into the yard. When Celia found out she was pregnant, Ofelia started taking Celia’s clothes and shoes.
The house on Palmas Street has an unhappy history, as Celia, already fragile from heartbreak, was basically driven insane there as a newlywed. Her mother-in-law and sister-in-law, who resent her presence in the family for unclear reasons, do everything they can to make Celia feel dehumanized and unwanted.
Themes
Celia hoped for a baby boy, so he could make his own way in the world. She would then leave Jorge and sail to Spain to reunite with Gustavo. But if she had a girl, she’d stay and teach her daughter survival. When their daughter was born, Jorge named her Lourdes. Celia handed Lourdes to Jorge by one leg, saying, “I will not remember her name.”
Perhaps thinking of her own heartbreaking passion for Gustavo, Celia believes that girls face an inherently more difficult path in the world. She thinks that she must be there to teach a daughter how to survive in a way that a son wouldn’t need. With a son, Celia would feel free to leave in pursuit of her own obsessions. However, when Lourdes is born, Celia is seemingly driven to a breaking point by her in-laws—she appears to reject her daughter, which will likely have lifelong consequences for their relationship.
Themes
Presently, after a sleepless night in Felicia’s house, Celia goes to a ceiba tree nearby. Offerings, like fruit and coins, surround its trunk. Celia’s great-aunt Alicia once told her that the ceiba is a maternal saint. Celia circles the tree, making a wish for her daughter.
The ceiba tree, with massive roots, is native to the tropical Caribbean and West Africa. Celia participates in a cultural superstition with roots in Santería, believing that a prayer before the sacred tree will have special benefits for Felicia.
Themes
Celia decides to hitchhike to the Plaza de la Revolución to hear El Líder make a speech. She thinks that now that Jorge is dead, she’ll devote her remaining years to El Líder and his Revolution. She signs up for a brigade that’s cutting sugarcane and spends two weeks in the fields. She imagines Cuba growing prosperous because of the sugar—a prosperity that she and the other workers can share.
Throughout the book, Fidel Castro is referred to as El Líder. Celia is already devoted to Castro and the cause of the Cuban Revolution. Throwing herself into its activities, even identifying herself with it fully, helps her channel her grief following her husband’s death. Perhaps actively working for the Revolution helps Celia feel justified in the political divide that damaged her marriage.
Themes
Celia has a recurring dream of a young girl filling her pockets with shells. The girl ignores warnings that a tidal wave is coming. When the wave comes, she floats underwater with hummingbirds, pheasants, and cows; a mango tree bears fruit and dies.
For Celia, shells are a symbol of bad luck. The girl in the dream is apparently Felicia, heedless of warnings before the tidal wave that nearly destroyed the family’s home. It suggests a poor fortune for Felicia, implying that she only pays attention to her own obsessions and will therefore be overwhelmed by bad luck, no matter how others try to help her.
Themes
When Celia returns to Felicia’s house, she finds her daughter in worse shape. She untangles and washes Felicia’s filthy hair, but Felicia refuses to change out of her nightgown. She’s afraid of letting any light into the house. Luz and Milagro say they’ve had nothing but ice cream for days, and that their mother spends her days dancing with Ivanito. Celia takes the girls back to Santa Teresa del Mar with her, but Ivanito refuses to leave his mother.
Felicia has descended further into illness. She is closely bonded with her son Ivanito, yet she’s failed to bond with the girls, seemingly repeating the same pattern of Celia’s rejection of Lourdes.
Themes
Celia wonders what the twins are thinking. Their father, Hugo Villaverde, has returned a few times with gifts, once hitting Felicia, another time giving her syphilis. Yet the girls refuse to give up their father’s surname. As they take the bus out of Havana, Celia wonders why she can’t mourn for Jorge—something comes between her and her sorrow.
The past looms large over the girls’ lives and over Celia; in their different ways, none of them can fully let go of it. For Celia, it has to do with her passion, both for her ex-lover and for the Revolution. For the twins, it has to do with Hugo’s abuse of Felicia, though the specifics their parents’ relationship aren’t yet clear.
Themes
