América

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1998

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

Nostalgia for Cuba

The family that assembles for the Thanksgiving feast are recent immigrants from Cuba. They know very little about American history and customs and are not especially interested in learning. They remember Cuba, which they regard as their true home; they are Cubans, not Americans. Nostalgia for Cuba, which they fled after Fidel Castro took over the country and established a Communist dictatorship, is prominent in their minds. They love Cuban food and are slow to adapt to American food. They look back to happy days in Cuba, when they lived well in a country where they felt they belonged. In the poem, the Cuban exiles who pass the time in one of the Cuban stores in Miami complain about the wealth that they lost (or was taken from them) following the Communist revolution. They wear “guayaberas” (Line 19), or traditional Cuban shirts, drink Cuban coffee, and smoke Cuban cigars. They speak no English. Although the family depicted in the poem are willing to tolerate an American meal at Thanksgiving, they make sure that there are traditional Cuban dishes available as well. After the meal, they put music on that reminds them of Cuba, and they “began to merengue” (Line 82), enjoying a popular Latin American dance together. In other words, they have not forgotten where they came from and how deeply Cuban culture is ingrained in their identities.

It is important to note that this nostalgia is seen through the eyes of a child, who has essentially inherited his Cuban identity from his family while growing up in America. The speaker observes this attachment, however, the longer he lives in America, the more he wants to adapt to the world around him. Unlike his parents and extended family, the speaker is more immersed in American culture and tries to introduce it into his family’s traditions, bit by bit. At times, the boy seems even disdainful of the nostalgia, viewing the men at the corner shop as “ashamed and empty as hollow trees” (Line 24). Part of a new generation of Cubans growing up in the U.S., the speaker is seen seeking compromises, finding ways to creatively merge new and old traditions throughout the poem.

American Identity

In contrast to the rest of his family, the young narrator of the poem identifies with being an American. There is no evidence that he has any memories of being in Cuba. (Indeed, Blanco was born in Spain and immigrated with his family to the United States when he was an infant.) The boy’s friend (presumably at school) is called Jeff, an American-sounding name, and the boy narrator flatly states, “I spoke English; my parents didn’t” (Line 28). It is he who explains some of the important things in American history and culture to his grandmother, and he shows some enthusiasm about it, quoting many of the iconic American phrases, such as “amber waves of grain” (Line 52) from the song “America the Beautiful”. He does not in any way identify with the cause of the Cuban exiles and the stories they tell themselves. Of the Cuban exiles he observes in Antonio’s Mercado, who are complaining about their situation, he writes very harshly:

the bile of Cuban coffee and cigar residue

filling the creases of their wrinkled lips;

clinging to one another’s lies of lost wealth,

ashamed and empty as hollow trees (Lines 21-24).

In an effort to embrace his growing American identity, the speaker persuades the family to have an American Thanksgiving with turkey and all the trimmings. He acts as a bridge between the two cultures. For his Spanish-speaking grandmother, he translates the instructions on the bag about how to prepare the marshmallows, and just before the meal he offers a “bilingual blessing” (Line 71). This conflict between the identity of the adults, and the identity of the boy evolves over the course of the poem, growing as the boy realizes, perhaps before his parents, that they were not returning to Cuba. He remembers that “Overheard conversations about returning, / had grown wistful and less frequent” (Lines 26-27), just as he notices his own acclimation to American culture. Much of the poem portrays the boy’s effort to embrace a new culture while his family clings to the old, just as the adult speaker recognizes the rich and supportive family traditions brought to the new country have their own value as well.

Generation Gap

There isa notable culture gap between the family of Cuban exiles and the country in which they now find themselves. Language, food, and music are all different. There is also a generation gap, because the young boy is far more attuned to U.S. history and culture than the rest of his family. He knows things that they do not. He speaks the new language, and whenever necessary acts as translator for the family. The generation gap, as well as the culture gap, can be discerned in the line, “I spoke English; my parents didn’t” (Line 28). The boy is, in a sense, living in a different world. This can also be seen when the young boy looks with dismay at the older men in the store who are constantly grumbling about their lives and looking back to another time and place when they were happy. The boy does not understand their attitude and has no sympathy for it. He is young and can only look forward; he simply wants to get along in the country that he thinks of as home. “By seven I had grown suspicious—we were still here” (Line 25), he says, which also suggests the generation gap: the boy no longer accepts at face value the things the adults say.

Part of what is informing the young boy’s admiration for his new country is the television shows he watches at home. The shows he watches, like The Brady Bunch, The Donna Reed Show, the Dick Van Dyke Show, and The Patty Duke Show, all portray white American families, living in the suburbs in comfortable and profitable communities. Each family has a maid and/or an idealized housewife running the household, and the girls and boys in the show define an idea of childhood for the generations of Americans watching the show. These programs would have presented a sharp contrast to the speaker’s Latino background and multi-cultural surroundings, and would have been completely foreign to the child’s adult parents.