Women play a large role in the books Bodega Dreams and Dreaming in Cuban. Blanca has just started a family and all of the sudden her family is swept up in the street life that she is trying to escape. Celia has a family that is spread all over the world. She misses them and wants them to come back to her. Celia and Blanca both have family they love and a passion that is driving a wedge between them and their families. Through these two woman we can see the beginning and ending of the matriarchs of a family. They struggle to keep their family together, keep their passions, and to live the life they imagined.
Celia’s family has all left her except for Felicia, even though at times Felicia has left her just as much as the others despite that she lives near Celia. Lourdes left her mother to go to New York; she does not like Celia and the revolution she stands for. She felt closer to her father and when he died Ceilia could not replace what she had with him. Javier moved to Czechoslovakia to live out his dreams for the revolution and married and had a kid that Celia has never seen. Finally, her husband Jorge dies. The family that she desires is scattered and she has not even seen all of her grandchildren, which tears at her, “she wrote a special letter to Irinita encouraging her to keep up her Spanish and promising to teach her how to swim” (Garcia, 118). Blanca has her family close to her, Chino lives with her and she stayed close to the neighborhood that she grew up in. However, this physical closeness is not indicative of the closeness of her relationships, especially with Chino. With Chino, Sapo and the street life he represents are a main source of arguments; Blanca sees the neighborhood as a bad place, “here it only matters what they can break, take, or steal from you” (Quinonez, 17). This makes it hard for Blanca to talk to him when he persists to get involved in this life, even though Chino thinks he is doing it for the good of his family.
The passions that Celia and Blanca have for the revolution and the church, respectively, are a source of issues in both families and are part of the reasons their families are not as close as they would like them to be. Celia has a passion for the revolution and the emptiness that is left by her separated family causes her to jump into the cause and decide that whatever her remaining years are “she will devote to El Lieder, and give herself to his revolution” (Garcia, 44). Her passion for the cause has driven Lourdes and Pilar, to whom Celia is most connected to, away from her. Blanca’s passion in the church is a source of contention in her household. Chino doesn’t believe in the faith that is so instrumental in Blanca’s life. When she married Chino she gave up her privileged place in front of the church with her tambourine. “She hated going to church by herself” and often tried to get Chino to go with her which didn’t help their relationship much (Quinonez, 17). Yet, despite the effect their passion for the revolution or the church they would not give them up to bring their families together.
Both women wanted to better themselves and have their families close to them; this is part of the lives they imagined for themselves. Celia begins to get what she desired at the end of the novel; Lourdes, Pilar, and Javier come back for some time. However, they all end up leaving and Pilar even helps Ivanito to escape Cuba, taking him away from his grandmother. So, in the end Celia almost gets what she desires, her family all together, but in the end even those that she thought would stay with her end up leaving her and she returns to the sea. Blanca makes the choice to leave Chino until he gets his act together and decides what he wants from life. At the end of the novel she is still with her mother and we don’t learn if her feelings have changed. However, it seems as if Chino is going to make some changes in his life and that they might allow for Blanca to have the family she wants.
Celia and Blanca are two very strong women that want things that sometimes conflict. They want their families, but they also want to pursue the things they believe in. These often conflict with each other and create problems in their families. However, neither woman stops working towards what they want and show them both to be very driven. Although Celia never truly gets what she wants, in the end she comes to terms with her life and returns to the ocean that she loves. Blanca’s future is unclear but there is hope at the end of the novel that she might get the family she wanted and the better life she dreamed about.
Lynn, it was interesting to read your post, as it not only talks about family, but also the role strong women play in keeping families together. You make a great point when you say that the women in both "Dreaming in Cuban" and "Bodega Dreams" not only have to figure out a way to achieve personal goals, such as getting a college education, but also want to "keep their families close to them," because they're important.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to compare the struggles the women in these two novels are facing with other women in the United States. The 'second shift' many women have to complete when getting home from work is a sort of a barrier to reaching personal goals. The conflict between family and other goals, then, is kind of a common theme across many ethnic groups.
I never thought about Blanca being the matriarch of her family, but I can see that now after reading your post. I like that you relate their relationships not only to the loved ones around them, but also to the things the two women are very passionate about: the church and the revolution. Both women have to deal with loved ones disagreeing with what they love most, and to some extent I think it makes them stronger.
ReplyDeleteLynn, it was really neat to read about and compare the women in Bodega Dreams and Dreaming in Cuban. Thank you for pointing out the parallels between Celia and Blanca and their stories through their hopes and dreams for themselves and their families, and the lives they have led. I think it's interesting that these two women have things in common despite their different cultures and their difference in years. Blanca is so young compared to Celia, and must have a completely different perspective on life, yet they had similar hopes and dreams for their future, and they both longed for their families to be close to them.
ReplyDeleteThe way you contrast Blanca's love for the church with Celia's passion for the revolution is interesting. Both women draw on powerful value systems outside of themselves to give their lives meaning. To focus your thesis further, you might discuss how the ideologies these women subscribe to affect their families.There are some interesting differences between these characters to consider, too. Celia appears to be a traditional matriarch, but her own mother rejected her and sent her off to life with an Aunt. She is unable to establish strong bonds with her daughters. Her granddaughter is her last hope for passing on her legacy. Blanca, on the other hand, is a matriarch in the making. Blanca is the moral center of her family, and draws boundaries as to the limits of what is acceptable. She has the love and loyalty of her husband, but there's tension around the degree to which she can tolerate his connections with organized crime. So the book leaves it up to the reader to speculate as to whether she will ultimately be able to hold her family together or not.
ReplyDeleteLynn, I am also focusing my paper on family matriarchs, so my theme is closely tied to yours. I appreciate what you say about their passions. That is not something I had thought of, but will be helpful for me. I’m taking a bit of a darker approach, looking at how the matriarchs take part in the falling apart of the family (something you touched on in your first paragraph, I believe).
ReplyDeleteI especially appreciate what you say about their conflicting desires. I had viewed the issue as more one-dimensional than that, but I think there is a lot of truth in the pain in their lives stemming from their inability to reconcile their desires.
In truth, is this all that different from us in our lives today?