Dreaming in Cuban: The Meaning of Shells Summary & Analysis

1974. One October afternoon in 1974, Felicia is marching through the Sierra Maestra, but she can’t remember why. She’s wearing a helmet and cheap Russian boots and carrying a rifle. Lieutenant Xiomara Rojas yells at Felicia and the group of women to keep moving. Felicia is miserable.

The women in Felicia’s brigade are mostly middle-aged—“a unit of malcontents” and “social misfits” whom it’s Lieutenant Rojas’s job to transform into revolutionaries. Felicia is there because she almost killed herself and Ivanito, though she doesn’t remember this. She has been deemed an “unfit mother,” and everyone convinced her to send Ivanito to boarding school to help him “integrate” with boys his own age.

With Ivanito gone, everyone encourages Felicia to find new meaning in her life—to become “a New Socialist Woman.” Celia points out that Felicia has never done much for the Revolution, which is a major point of contention between the two of them. But Felicia scorns revolutionary slogans and only wishes that her son was there.

Felicia tends her nails and rubs lotion on her hands while the others in the troop talk. A woman named Silvia complains that her daughter betrayed her as an “antisocial” for insisting that the family say grace at the dinner table. Another reports that a man was sent to the marble quarries for having long hair and listening to American music. Felicia never talks to the rest of the group.

Felicia likes volunteering for night duty. It reminds her of some of Herminia’s gods, to whom the slaves used to pray. She also remembers the nights when she would sit with Celia on her wicker swing until dawn.  Celia would recite poetry, which Felicia heard as a kind of prayer, and from which Felicia “learned her florid language.” Felicia often quotes from those poems now, and it always sounds right to her, but others don’t understand.

Nowadays, Felicia and her mother just fight over El Líder. Felicia worries that Celia’s attraction to El Líder is partly sexual, as for many Cuban women. Felicia doesn’t trust El Líder’s cold bitterness, sensing that though he’s seduced many women, his only true passion is for the Revolution. But she can’t resist fantasizing about him too.

1975. It’s December in Santa Teresa del Mar, and the whole town has squeezed into the local movie theater to watch Celia preside over a dispute between Ester Ugarte (the postmaster’s wife) and Loli Regalado, whom Ester has accused of seducing her husband. Celia has served as a civilian judge on the People’s Court for three years and is proud of what she’s made of her life since Jorge’s death, serving the Revolution. She is happy to do anything El Líder asks. In her judgments, Celia likes to focus on reform, especially “converting […] young delinquents into productive revolutionaries.”

Earlier this year, the Family Code was passed, and that means people have been increasingly bringing domestic troubles to the courts—things like husbands neglecting housework or spouses having affairs. In this particular case, Loli claims that Rogelio Ugarte pushed himself onto her. Ester claims that Loli was wearing a provocative dress at the time. Celia bangs her gavel to stop the squabbling that erupts between the two women and the divided audience. She knows it's true that Rogelio is a cheater. Finally, she sends somebody to find Rogelio so the dispute can be settled more directly.

During this interim, the theater is filled with argument, as Loli and Ester’s dispute gives everyone else an excuse to reopen old wounds. The discord feels symbolic of Cuba’s failures. Celia wonders why generosity and commitment are so rare. When Rogelio is brought in, he confesses to trying to seduce Loli. Ester flies into a rage and attacks her husband. When Celia regains control, she sentences Rogelio to a year’s volunteer work in the short-staffed local nursery. As everyone cheerfully files out of the theater, Celia feels discouraged that everyone treats the court like a soap opera.

That night, Celia wonders how she can serve her neighbors as a judge yet be useless to her middle-aged children. Her daughters don’t understand Celia’s love for El Líder. Celia feels offended by the photos Lourdes sends of her successful bakery in New York. Meanwhile, Felicia doesn’t care about the revolution, preferring the luxury (the “waste,” in Celia’s mind) of unplanned time.

Celia looks at a picture of her son, Javier. As a teenager, Javier had shared Celia’s enthusiasm for the Revolution, but they’d had to keep it quiet at home because Jorge was staunchly against it. In 1966, Javier left for Czechoslovakia, later becoming a biochemistry professor at Prague. He had a little girl, Irinita, to whom he spoke Spanish so that she could someday talk with Celia.

Though Celia keeps herself busy, she has to admit that she is lonely—she doesn’t have anyone to share happiness with. She misses talking to Pilar in the middle of the night; their connection somehow got lost, and a new one hasn’t begun.

Luz Villaverde (1976). Luz remembers how handsome Hugo used to be. She blames Mamá for destroying him. For nine years after the fire incident, the girls didn’t see their father, but they always imagined he’d come back and rescue them from their mother. They think Felicia offers only pretty, meaningless words. They even start calling her “not-Mamá,” even though this upsets Ivanito.

Whenever Milagro, who’s more sentimental, feels sorry for Mamá, Luz reminds her of their ninth birthday party. Their whole class came. When Luz broke open her piñata, she discovered that it was filled not with candy, but with raw eggs. Mamá had just laughed as the sticky children ran shrieking to their parents.

That summer, the girls got their first postcard from Hugo, whom the girls call Papi. He told them he was living in a hotel on the wharf and wanted to see them. While Felicia went to a voodoo meeting, the twins took a taxi to the decaying hotel. When Milagro knocked on the door, Hugo, with his mutilated face and scarred hands, answered and embraced them. They began visiting him more often. He lived on a meager disability pension but somehow afforded gifts for them. In time, the girls grew less afraid of his face and found in his eyes a more meaningful language than their mother had to offer.

One day, Hugo asks to see Ivanito. Luz and Milagro feel jealous, but they decide that their brother should see what Felicia did to his father. There’s a hurricane warning that day, and if it weren’t for the sudden rain, they might have turned around. But instead, they enter the slightly open door and find their father having sex with a prostitute.

After this incident, the three children return to boarding school. Luz and Milagro are happy there, but Ivanito cries a lot. He feels guilty about visiting Hugo and fears that Felicia will find out, even though the siblings pricked their fingers and swore they’d never talk about it. Luz thinks that Ivanito doesn’t yet realize that Felicia doesn’t really care about any of them.