Imagination

"Imagination, like memory, can transform lies to truths," Felicia whispers in her son's ear. Nobody else teaches him that.

Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia

Families

Luz says that families are essentially political and that he'll have to choose sides.

Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia

Tides

May 11, 1945

Gustavo,

The familiar is insistent and deadly. I study the waves and keep time on my wicker swing. If I was born to live on an island, then I'm grateful for one thing that the tides rearrange the borders. At least I have the illusion of change, of possibility. To be locked within boundaries plotted by priests and politicians would be the only thing more intolerable.

Don't you see how they're carving up the world, Gustavo? How they're stealing our geography? Our fates? The arbitrary is no longer in our hands. To survive is an act of hope.

Celia

Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia

Dreaming in Cuban Review

I finished reading Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia yesterday. The first thing I thought of when I read it was that it was exactly the same as Monkey Hunting for my college class. It was the same story format with the intergenerational narratives. It saddens me to know this is a "form" for her writing. I did enjoy reading the book and hearing the characters' distinct voices. It was a nice short story and I am glad that I can say I read it, since it is Christina Garcia's more famous books. I think she painted a beautiful portrait of a family but I wish she would have gone into more details like if Celia's husband felt guilty about being cruel to her during their early days of marriage and how their relationship developed after that. I also want to know more about Felicia's husbands and her children, especially her twins. I wonder if this writing format was novel when she first used it in Dreaming in Cuban.

Running with Scissors Interpretations

The reviews of Burrough's Running with Scissors are very interesting for two reasons. First, many of them make comments about points in the book but are completely inaccurate. They refer to one man having an incestual relationship, but he was just having sex with a girl for whom he was her guardian, he was not her blood relative (not that this is an ethical thing to do). Second, like me, most reviewers did not know really what to say about the book. Some wrote it got slow at points, but most just said the book is really funny and sad all at the same time. A few wrote that this book gets at the heart of the 1970s for the middle class but I feel a lot of what happens could happen today still. I think I left the book the same way the reviewers left it: shocked and sad but laughing the whole way.

Cursing with Freud

In addition to calling each other standard names like bitch and whore, the Finches incorporated Freud's stages of psychosexual development into their arsenal of invectives.

"You are so oral. You'll never make it to genital! The most you can ever hope for is to reach anal, you immature, frigid old maid," Natalie yelled.

Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs

Shoes

My mother only wears fancy shoes when she's going out, so I've come to associate them with a feeling of abandonment and dread.

Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs