“We Came All the Way From Cuba So You Could Dress Like This?”

“We Came All the Way From Cuba So You Could Dress Like This?” Presented by Marilyn Pinto and Kelly Sanchez

General Themes • Migration to the U.S. from socialist Cuba • Machismo, Feminism and Homosexuality • Political Issues • Cuban Americans • Discrimination • Nostalgia

Elements of the Story • What is different about the way that Obeja narrates the story? • She is telling the future as she sees it • “But this is a long way off, of course.” • She does not put special emphasis on any one part of her persona. She is not JUST Latina, JUST a Cuban immigrant or JUST a lesbian.

Elements of the Story • When you first started reading the story, did you know if the narrator was male or female? • It is not until her father refers to her as “she” and “her” • Even after we know she is a female, her language is still very genderless

Elements of the Story • Do you feel like her gender is almost “chosen” for her? Do you remember what was given to her in at the “processing center”? • “oatmeal cookies, a plastic doll with blonde hair and a blue dress and a rosary made of white plastic beads” • Plastic doll = preparing her for her domestic future? A child? • Rosary = forcing her to be religious?

Elements of the Story • Do you think the narrator is lesbian, bisexual, straight or curious? • Why? • “For all the blond boyfriends I will have, there will be only two yellow-haired lovers. One doesn’t really count – a boy in the military academy… The other will be Martha, perceived by the whole lesbian community as a gold-digger” (115)

Elements of the Story • Do you think the father was a hero? • What characteristics does the father have? • Role of a rescuer to his wife and child • Saves his patria • “Protector” though abusive • What does he want for his daughter? Career goals? • Things a father would want for a son, typically • Blames daughter for everything • Where do you see machismo present in this story?

Elements of the Story • What is the relationship between father and daughter like? • “My father does not imagine me… as a wife or mother because to do so would be to imagine someone else closer to than he is, and he cannot endure that” (Obeja 117) • Gives her permission to act outside of the normal “female” roles/behavior • When they get into that argument, does she questions his “heroic” deeds?

Elements of the Story • What about the mother? What does she want the narrator to be? • “Owner of many appliances; mother of two mischievous children; the wife of a boyishly handsome North American man; a career woman with a well-paying position in local broadcasting” • What do you think about this dream? • “double shift”

In Relation to Chapter 9 • Do you see this as a coming out tale? Or Does Obeja just talk about Latino/as sexuality? • “Obejas makes no apologies and offers no excuses as a lesbian and does not place her ethnic and sexual selves oppositionally – rather, they exist, as the should, as facts of her identity, not as deciding and ruling factors (Quiroga and Lopez 144)

Final Thoughts • “And then there’s a noise – a screech out in the alley followed by what sounds like a hyena’s laughter – and my father leaps up and looks out the window, then starts laughing, too… Only in America, echoes my mother” • What do you think they saw? • What none of us can measure yet is how much of the voyage is already behind us (Obeja 131) • What does this quote mean to you? To the narrator?

References • Cooper, Sara. “Queering Family: Achy Obeja’s “We Came All the Way from Cuba so That You Could Dress Like This?” Chasqui, Vol 32. 76-88. 2003. Print. • Obeja, Achy. We Came All the Way from Cuba So You Could Dress Like This. 113-131. Pittsburgh: Cleis P, 1994. Print. • Quiroga, Jose, and Melanie Lopez Frank. “Cultural Production of Knowledge on Latina/o Sexualities.” Latina/o Sexualities. New Brunswick: Rutgers P., 2010. 137-49. Print

“We Came All the Way From Cuba So You Could Dress Like This?”