Dreaming in Cuban is Cuban American author Cristina García’s first novel. It was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1992 and garnered positive reviews from readers and critics alike. A multi-generational family saga that shifts back and forth between the experiences and eras of multiple narrators, Dreaming in Cuban explores themes of immigration and exile, family dynamics, political ideology, religion, and the impact of the Cuban Revolution on Cubans and Cuban Americans. The novel is considered a work of magical realism.

Known for crafting narratives that engage with the experiences of the Cuban diaspora in the United States as well as in Latin America and Europe, Cristina García provides an important voice that champions Cuban American and Hispanic literary traditions. García’s other novels include The Agüero Sisters (1997), Monkey Hunting (2003), A Handbook to Luck (2007), The Lady Matador’s Hotel (2010), and King of Cuba (2013). In 2023 she released Vanishing Maps, a sequel to Dreaming in Cuban.

This guide refers to the 2017 trade paperback edition by Ballantine Books.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide contain discussions of mental illness, sexual assault, and death by suicide. The source text also contains racist language.

Plot Summary

Celia Almeida, a young Cuban woman living in Havana, meets and falls in love with Gustavo, a visiting Spaniard. Although she is sure that their lives are destined to be joined forever, Gustavo returns to Spain without her. Devastated, Celia takes to her bed. Although doctors can find no sign of a physical ailment, she begins to waste away. In spite of her condition, Jorge del Pino falls in love with her and persuades her to marry him. Jorge is employed by an American company, and his work necessitates frequent travel. While he is away, Jorge leaves Celia in his house on Palmas Street with his mother and his sister. The two women treat Celia with particular cruelty, and their resentment only increases when Celia becomes pregnant. By the time Celia’s daughter Lourdes is born, Celia’s mental state has deteriorated, and Jorge has her committed to a psychiatric institution.

Jorge thus becomes Lourdes’s primary caretaker, and the two develop a lifelong bond. Rather than remaining in his mother’s home, Jorge moves his small family to a house on Cuba’s northern coast, in Santa Teresa del Mar. Celia and Jorge have two more children, Felicia and Javier. Of the three children, Javier will be the only one who prefers Celia to Jorge. Javier and Celia will come to share an enthusiasm for the revolutionary project of Fidel Castro’s Cuba, while Jorge, Felica, and Lourdes will remain capitalist and pro-American in their political orientation.

As the years pass, the three del Pino children’s paths will diverge. Javier leaves Cuba for communist Czechoslovakia, where he eventually becomes a university professor. Lourdes falls in love with a wealthy man named Rufino Puente. Although Rufino’s family disapproves of Lourdes, the two marry anyway and move to the Puentes’ ranch in the Cuban countryside. After the Cuban Revolution takes place and the family’s land is confiscated, they emigrate to the United States with their young daughter, Pilar.

Meanwhile, Felicia, who is doomed to be unlucky in love, takes up with a violent and troubled man named Hugo and gives birth to twins named Luz and Milagro and another son, Ivanito. Felicia and Hugo spend only enough time together to produce their offspring and then dramatically separate. Felicia will struggle with her mental health, but with the help of her best friend Herminia, the daughter of a santero, she will find a connection to her Cuban identity through the Afro-Cuban practice of Santería.

Now living in Brooklyn, Lourdes buys a bakery. As a staunch anti-communist, she continues to feel an emotional distance from her mother, Celia, who maintains her loyalty to Cuba’s communist regime. Rufino, who has been scarred by the revolution and is not comfortable in exile, does not work and instead putters around in his workshop. Their daughter Pilar is a talented artist and iconoclast, and she finds an outlet for her angst and energy in New York’s burgeoning punk scene. She and Lourdes are not close, and Pilar bristles against Lourdes’s controlling parenting techniques. Pilar feels a much stronger affinity toward her grandmother, Celia, and at night she feels as though she is visited by Celia’s spirit. After catching her father cheating on Lourdes, Pilar runs away to Miami, hoping to find a fisherman to take her to her grandmother in Cuba. She is not successful, but her longing for Cuba will remain with her throughout her adolescence and early adulthood, and ultimately, she will convince her mother Lourdes to return with her to Cuba, if only for a visit.

Jorge, having immigrated to New York four years before the start of the novel’s action, dies of cancer, and his family members react in different ways. Celia does not precisely grieve for her husband. The two had long been separated by exile and ideology, for Celia’s revolutionary fervor had only increased as the years passed, while Jorge remained committed to American values and capitalism. By contrast, Lourdes is bereft and communicates daily with the spirit of her recently deceased father. Felica, still struggling with her mental health, turns to Santería, and Celia, who is worried about her grandchildren, takes Luz and Milagro away from their mother. Ivanito, however, chooses to remain with Felicia, but when Felicia attempts to kill both herself and her son, Ivanito is removed from the household and sent to boarding school.

Celia then tries to instill in Felicia an appreciation for a cause that is “greater” than herself: She sends Felicia to join a military unit in the mountains so that she might become a “New Socialist Woman.” However, Felicia is deeply unhappy as a soldier and does not share her mother’s enthusiasm for communism. She leaves her unit, has a major relapse, and ends up losing her memory and forgetting her identity. Her road to recovery is again through Santería, although ultimately her health fades and she dies. After her death, Lourdes and Pilar finally make their way to Cuba. There, Pilar and Celia bond deeply. They spend time together, and Pilar paints a portrait of her grandmother. Just as they arrive, a crisis begins brewing at the Peruvian embassy in Havana. An increasingly large group of would-be émigrés has gathered, hoping to be allowed to leave Cuba. When Castro finally assents, Lourdes makes sure that young Ivanito is among those who will board boats, ships, and planes in search of a better life. As the novel ends, it is understood that Ivanito will emigrate to the United States. Celia finally lets go of her long-lost love, Gustavo, and casts her drop pearl earrings into the sea.