Cristina
García
Writer
Born: Havana, Cuba
Author of Dreaming
in Cuban, The Agüero Sisters, Monkey Hunting,
and ¡Cubanísmo!, an anthology of contemporary Cuban
literature, Cristina García explores Cuban identity by confronting
her own experience of displacement and loss of cultural memory.
“At any given time, there are three realities competing
for my attention: the everyday life with my daughter, the life
of what I’m reading, and the life of what I’m writing.
If I weren’t a writer, I’d be diagnosed with multiple
personality disorder!”
In 1961,
in the wake of Castro’s rise to power, García,
then two, immigrated with her family to New York City where
they lived in ethnically diverse neighborhoods with few Cubans
or other
Latinos. Her self-described “three-childhoods-in-one” consisted
of life at home, at school with friends, and a “hidden” life
of books and writing. Then, as now, her private self sustained
her other two identities.
After college and graduate
school, García worked for Time
magazine as a correspondent and Miami bureau chief. Despite her
Cuban background, she didn’t particularly fit in Miami. It
wasn’t until García visited Cuba when she was 25 that
she began identifying with her cultural heritage.
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