I was only two years old when I left Cuba but I remember everything that’s happened to me since I was a baby, even word-for-word conversations. I was sitting in my grandmother’s lap, playing with her drop pearl earrings, when my mother told her we were leaving the country. Abuela Celia called her a traitor to the revolution. Mom tried to pull me away but I clung to the Abuela and screamed at the top of my lungs. My grandfather came running and said, “Celia, let the girl go. She belongs with Lourdes.” This was the last time I saw her.
My father knew I understood more than I could say. He told me stories about Cuba after Columbus came. He said that the Spaniards wiped out more Indians with smallpox than with muskets.
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Read the excerpt from Cristina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban.If it were up to me, I’d record other things. Like the time there was a freak hailstorm in the Congo and the women took it as a sign that they should rule . . . Why don’t I know anything about them? Who chooses what we should know or what’s important? I know I have to decide these things for myself. Most of what I’ve learned that’s important I’ve learned on my own, or from my grandmother.What does the excerpt reveal about Cristina Garcia?
Read the excerpt from Cristina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban.I don’t really want to talk about my father but I end up telling Minnie how he used to take me horseback riding on our ranch, strapping me in his saddle with a leather seat belt he designed just for me. Dad’s family owned casinos in Cuba, and had one of the largest ranches on the island. There were beef cattle and dairy cows, horses, pigs, goats, and lambs. Dad fed them molasses to fatten them, and gave the chickens corn and sorghum until they laid vermilion eggs, rich with vitamins. He took me on an overnight inspection once. We camped out under a sapodilla tree and listened to the pygmy owls with their old women’s voices. My father knew I understood more than I could say. He told me stories about Cuba after Columbus came. He said that the Spaniards wiped out more Indians with smallpox than with muskets.How does the structure of the excerpt add meaning to the passage?
Students who have read a section of a text and do not understand it should
Lourdes buys a round box of sticky dates and considers the centuries of fratricide converging on this street corner in Brooklyn. She ponders the transmigrations from the southern latitudes, the millions moving north.
Read the excerpt from Cristina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban.My mother says that Abuela Celia’s had plenty of chances to leave Cuba but that she’s stubborn and got her head turned around by El Líder. Mom says “Communist” the way some people says “cancer,” low and fierce.Which element from this excerpt best characterizes Garcia’s story as one of magic realism?
Draya is a student who does not understand the following sentence from Dreaming in Cuban.She reads the newspapers page by page for leftist conspiracies, jams her finger against imagined evidence and says, “See. What did I tell you?”Which previous segment should Draya reread to make the excerpt easier to understand?
Read the two excerpts about Jorge del Pino from Dreaming in Cuban.Excerpt 1: My grandfather came running and said, “Celia, let the girl go. She belongs with Lourdes.” Excerpt 2: “Pilar doesn’t hate you, hija. She just hasn’t learned to love you yet.”Which statement best synthesizes the ideas in these two excerpts?
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