Dreaming in Cuban: A Novel

Cristina García

Jun 2011 · Sold by Ballantine Books

About this ebook

“Impressive . . . [Cristina García’s] story is about three generations of Cuban women and their separate responses to the revolution. Her special feat is to tell it in a style as warm and gentle as the ‘sustaining aromas of vanilla and almond,’ as rhythmic as the music of Beny Moré.”—Time
 
Cristina García’s acclaimed book is the haunting, bittersweet story of a family experiencing a country’s revolution and the revelations that follow. The lives of Celia del Pino and her husband, daughters, and grandchildren mirror the magical realism of Cuba itself, a landscape of beauty and poverty, idealism and corruption. Dreaming in Cuban is “a work that possesses both the intimacy of a Chekov story and the hallucinatory magic of a novel by Gabriel García Márquez” (The New York Times). In celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the novel’s original publication, this edition features a new introduction by the author.

Praise for Dreaming in Cuban

“Remarkable . . . an intricate weaving of dramatic events with the supernatural and the cosmic . . . evocative and lush.”—San Francisco Chronicle
 
“Captures the pain, the distance, the frustrations and the dreams of these family dramas with a vivid, poetic prose.”—The Washington Post
 
“Brilliant . . . With tremendous skill, passion and humor, García just may have written the definitive story of Cuban exiles and some of those they left behind.”—The Denver Post

Ratings and reviews

I found Dreaming in Cuban to be a cumbersome effort to read. Almost from the start I was beginning to lose track of the characters and I was beginning to think that I would need a score card to keep track of who was who. In this novel the author did create interesting scenes that centers around the Cuban family, and culture but there were so many loose ends when I finished reading the book that the overall story just didn't connect with me. It's not a terrible read, maybe just an entertaining story.

It wasn't all that exciting to read at first. The characters did become more interesting as I read on though, especially Abuela. I liked the different perspectives of each of the main characters over the period of events as well as the insiders view of Cuban life and history.

The book is hard to follow because it jumps around from character to character. Each time it goes to a different character it is a different point in time. Hard to get into.

About the author

Cristina García is the author of seven novels, most recently King of Cuba, and the forthcoming Berliners Who. She has published poetry, books for young readers, and edited anthologies on Latino/a literature. Her work has been nominated for a National Book Award and translated into fourteen languages. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, and an NEA grant, among others. García has taught at universities nationwide and lives in the San Francisco Bay area.