Dreaming Up an Identity

The theme that I have chosen to focus on is Identity. In many of the novels we have read, identity was a major theme that seemed to plague most of the characters. In Bodega dreams, Chino is searching for an identity as long as he could remember. “ To have a name other than the one your parents gave you meant you had status in school, had status on the block. You were somebody. If anyone called you by your real name you were un mamao, a useless, meaningless thing. It meant that you hadn’t proved yourself, it was open season for anyone to kick your ass.” (4). Chino admits to wanting to have proven himself, getting recognition from the streets. This would give him the identity that he wanted. Another instance in which identity plays a major role in the beginning of the book is Chino describing how the teachers would treat them, they already were looked at as failures and this created tension in the student/teacher relationship, but also within themselves because they had no identity within their own families/cultures.

:“To white teachers we were all going to end up delinquents” “ I get paid whether you learn or not”, they would tell us”.

: “So, since we were almost convinced that our race had no culture, no smart people, we behaved even worse”

: “So we hated ourselves and fought everyday. And finally, after a while, when I lost the fear of hitting someone else(not the fear of getting hit, but of hitting someone else), I looked for fights”. (6-7).

            Chino is listening to Willie express his dream, wanting to become the biggest slumlord in New York City, helping people was his thing, but making money was his identity. As a part of that dream/ identity, Willie needed Chino to represent him and to do that well. In return, Willie helps Chino acquire an apartment. I believe Chino really takes to Willie because he is showing him what he can potentially become.

: “ People remember you as someone who tried to make the neighborhood a better place. And that’s good. And now they see your in school and that’s good too, bro. (36).

            To anyone who is search of an identity, you tend to go along with what makes you feel important at the time, you have a tendency to become engulfed with making a name for yourself. This is how Chino becomes linked up with Willie, he feels that through him, he can have his own identity.  

            In Cristina Garcia’s novel Dreaming in Cuban, she does a great job in depicting the struggles faced by these marginalized Cuban immigrants, with her character Pilar. Being both Cuban and American, she has strong attachments with the island as well as with the U.S. But because of the political and cultural boundaries that separate families, the Puentes family experiences identity loss. Pilar’s efforts to accept her Cuban heritage, while forging an identity as a Cuban-American woman stands out the most to me in this novel. Pilar is a young woman who is working to create an identity that addresses major issues such as language, morality, religion, gender and place what she herself identifies as the purgatory of biculturalism. She is the one character in the novel that must blend the past with the present, her Cuban heritage with her American life. The other major characters in the novel do not face nearly the same struggle, for Celia can only be Cuban, while Lourdes can only be American. Struggling with her language, Pilar’s Spanish suggests how the politics that separate Cuba and the U.S. have been introduced into the family relationships. Because she grew up in America, Pilar’s Spanish is hard-edged and awkward.

: “Pilar’s eyes, Celia fears, are no longer used to the compacted light of the tropics, where a morning hour can fill a month of days in the north, which receives only careless sheddings from the sun. She imagines her granddaughter pale, gliding through paleness, malnourished and cold without the food of scarlets and greens” (7).

Later on, despite Pilar’s recognition of her love for her mother, she has yet to fully develop a string sense of identity. Pilar’s art is representative of her fragmented identity.

:” My paintings have been getting more and more abstract lately, violent-looking with clotted swirls of red” (29).

If art is representative of the artists’ sense of self, then Pilar’s work shows clearly the struggles in which she faces. Pilar must reconcile her two worlds, Cuba and America, to fully develop her identity as a Cuban-American.  Pilar’s development of her identity is central to the novel’s theme. I remember her asking, “why don’t we read about this is history books, who chooses what we should know and what is important? (28). These questions give us premise to see Pilar’s interest in history and also how the historical constructs are patriarchal and this reflects her mother’s strong will that she inherits. Pilar discovers that no matter how she views things, history has shattered her family. Lourdes not speaking about her rape, Rufino dwelling on his memories of Cuba and not able to adjust to the U.S. makes it difficult for Pilar to piece together her own history, therefore making it difficult for her to find her identity!