An ethic of feminine reconciliation in contemporary Cuban American literature

This dissertation examines the recent attempt in Cuban American literature to build a bridge back to Cuba that fulfills multiple purposes: to lay claim to a legitimate cultural origin; to heal the family and internal divisions caused by exile; to define a version of Cuban cultural identity based on a feminine connection with a national self. The novels I treat share what I have termed an ethic of feminine reconciliation in which women characters provide the cultural affirmation necessary to establish ties to Cuba in spite of a 40-year-old blockade upheld by and enshrined in masculine rhetoric. Cultural identity takes precedence over national citizenship as these exiles attempt to recover their Cuban origins at the same moment that they inevitably become US ethnic minorities.;In the first chapter, I propose that for Cristina Garcia in Dreaming in Cuban (1992) and The Aguero Sisters (1997) Cuban Americans can best resolve their conflict of exile and divided identity by making peace with powerful Cuban women who restore their fading sense of cultural connection. The second chapter explores how Achy Obejas's novel Memory Mambo (1996) rewrites Garcia's ethic of feminine reconciliation to emphasize conflict, defiance, and loss. Although she embodies the possibility of reconciliation in an erotic relation with a female lover, Obejas deliberately fails to integrate the homosexual and cultural identities of her Cuban American protagonists. In the third chapter I concentrate on Oscar Hijuelos's The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (1989) in order to illustrate the failure of an ethic of feminine reconciliation in a work in which an authentic sense of Cubanness is unmistakably embodied by fathers and uncles, while women are subordinated into a role of sexual service. The fourth chapter examines Gustavo Perez Firmat's memoir Next Year in Cuba (1995) and critical text Life on the Hyphen: The Cuban American Way (1994) as companion pieces which illustrate that an ethic of feminine reconciliation can shift to become an ethic of transformation provided by a US woman to culturally connect a Cuban American man to the United States.