1) In
the book Monkey Hunting, by Cristina Garcia, I find two main themes. I could
not decide on which one I would pick so I figured I would name them both
instead. The first main theme of this book is “Change”. If you look at all the
characters and how they develop throughout the book they always seem to
experience some type of change. Like Domingo’s move to the United States or
Chen Pan’s move to Cuba or even Chen Fangs transition from acting like the boy
she never were to the girl she actually was. My second main theme is
“Memories”. Throughout this entire book, the characters keep referring to
memories, both good and bad. They think about them, live with them and even act
by the thoughts of their memories. So “Change” and “Memories” is basically what
this book is all about. Over all I think the author herself carries around a
lot of memories from her childhood, coming from change, both good and bad
memories. Maybe she includes a little bit of her own memories within this book
and tries to say how her life has been? It is hard to tell but most of the
times, you can relate the book to the authors own life.
2) Did you know that there were
Chinese slaves working on the sugar plantations in Cuba? I sure did not. I know
so little of the world historically and this book is like a textbook in
history! That was a huge pro. I liked this book because it was a cool mixture
of historical fiction and spiritual/familial journey. I really liked reading
about the Chinese Cuban culture and how, when and why the different waves of
Chinese immigration to Cuba happened. The first "wave" being slavery.
Other than that, this book is written in a beautiful language and the book is
very descriptive. I really like that. Just by reading the first opening lines
of this book, you get an idea of what this book will be about and how
well-written it will be: “At the circus,
Chen Pan watched as the trapeze artist swung from one end of her sagging tent
to another in a crimson streak. He followed her soarings, the arc of her willow
eyebrows, her delicate steps along the fragile seeming tightrope”. One of the dangers though of a
narrative that jumps without warning from Cuba in 1860 to New York in 1968 to
Shanghai in 1924 is that the reader can easily be left behind. I felt that
sometimes, especially since I am from a country where English is not the first
spoken language. I had trouble following the whole context sometimes and that
was of course a con for me. I also dislike that there are not solid endings in
this book and that we never saw a large part of Domingo's life after Vietnam
but I did think this was a great read. I had no idea about the large Chinese
population in Cuba. I have been reading just a little about Havana in school
and I briefly remember the texts mentioning how Chinese people were brought
over to work, but I never knew details. I would suggest this book to anyone who
is interested in either culture.
3)
Chen Pan is a young 20 year-old in China who signs a contract to make his
fortune in Cuba. He is promised that the tropical island is full of riches,
that "even the river fish jumped, unbidden, into frying pans." Chen
Pan figures he would work in Cuba for a few years, and return to China as a
rich, content, man. So it is that he signs his life into slavery on a sugarcane
plantation in Cuba. The ship journey over to the island is an indication of
what lies ahead. After long, hard labor, Chen Pan finally escapes the
plantation and makes his life in Havana. His escape from slavery in Cuba and
his survival in the country's harsh jungle eventually becomes the stuff of
legend. Chen Pan sets up a second hand store in Havana, Lucky Find, and has
three children with an African ex-slave, Lucrecia. Monkey Hunting is a tale of
many generations of the Pan family flitting back and forth between continents
and centuries. So basically you can say that Che Pan is the main
character. Chen Pan's granddaughter is
born in China, a third (undesired) daughter and raised a boy. She later becomes
a victim of China's Cultural Revolution. Chen Pan's great-great grandson,
Domingo Chen, is born an American but feels like he does not belong because his
skin color makes him stand out. He serves in Vietnam and falls in love with a
Vietnamese woman, Tham Thanh Lan.
4)
From Wikipedia: “García was born in Havana to a Guatemalan father and Cuban mother. In 1961, when she was two years
old, her family was among the first wave of people to flee Cuba after Fidel Castro came to power. They settled in New York City where she was raised in Queens, Brooklyn Heights, and Manhattan, in predominantly Irish, Italian, and
Jewish neighborhoods. Her family, however, communicated at home in Spanish and
shared many stories about Cuba during her youth, and she says that she has
always thought of herself as Cuban.” Obviously, Cristina Garcia herself has
been involved in the cuban revolution since her and her family fled Cuba when
Cristina was only two years old. I believe that she has been told a lot of
stories from her parents and relatives about this time and about the revolution
but that she was too young to fully understand it or understand it at all. If
you look closely to this book, you can clearly see how much she knows about
everything. She knows all about the revolution in detail. So how come? She was
only two years old? I think she was very curious about Cuba and the revolution
when she grew up. I guess she realized she was not like the other americans,
that she had a different background and then became almost obsessed with
understanding the revolution and the Cuban history. Maybe that was why she
wrote this book? She probably wanted to show the world all the things she
eventually learned about the cruelty and the bloody revolution.
5)
The
main message that I take from the book must be to remove racism from this
planet. In each chapter, who ever character you followed, you always found
racism in different forms. It was always there. Like Domingo’s associates who
thought he looked too much like the enemy or like the people around Chen Pen
who claimed he was crazy when he married Lucrecia. All around the people in
this book we found racism. The cuban revolution has also to do with racism. Why
not just look at people the same way? Why must people be racists? Let us kick
racism out of this world. That is a good message I will take with me from this
book.
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B. Book Review paragraphs – http://teacher.scholastic.com/writewit/bookrev/index.htm
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B. Book Review paragraphs – http://teacher.scholastic.com/writewit/bookrev/index.htm
Give a title (do not use “book review”)
Inside the Novel: Monkey Hunting, by Cristina García
review by Veronica
1st paragraph - Name the
author and the book; explain what you think is the main theme of the book. Over all, what do you think the author is
saying?
The writer of the book Monkey Hunting is Cristina García. I think that this book is very
articulated and complex because it tells the story of an entire dynasty of
people with Chinese origins and Cuban and American future, who have to face
many social and individual problems and matters during their lives like
slavery, racism, discrimination, love, politics, prostitution. I believe that
García wants the reader to think deeper about our society and try to connect
our present with what happened in the past, trying to understand how we arrived
to the mentality we have today, and that it was not always like this. I believe
that she wants us to ponder about the fact that not very long ago people were
facing serious discrimination problems and had to deal with it, and that if
today the situation is better we can say that it is also thanks to these people
who fought for their rights. Even if fortunately our society learned how to
deal with differences with a little more acceptance and understanding, we can
easily see that we often still have to face similar issues, but most of the
time we are not very conscious about them because our society became the way we
all think, and we don’t realize the seriousness of some events.
2nd paragraph – What do you
like or dislike about the writing style (pros and cons)? Use quotes to give your reader an idea of
what you mean.
When I first started to read this book I found the writing
very hard to understand not just for the vocabulary that the writer uses, but
also because of the structure of the novel itself. Every chapter analyses a
different character’s life, and there is no proper chronological order; we can
find a chapter talking about a certain year and the next two others talking
about the past or the future with no specific explanation of the events
happened in the meanwhile, but supporting the characters’ thoughts with only flashbacks,
memories, and historical events. For example I can talk about the beginning of
the Novel; the first three chapters (pages 3-42) introduce the reader to Chen
Pan’s character at the moment that he decides to go to Cuba, signs the contract
with an unknown man who promises him a better life and, when he arrives, he
finds out he is going to be a slave. It is between 1857 and 1860, and chapter
#3 ends after Chen Pan runs away from the sugar cane fields and finds himself
surviving in the forest for almost one year. Chapter #4 (pages 43-59) is instead
set more than one hundred years later and talks about Chen Pan’s great
grandson, Domingo Chen, who lives in New York with his father. It was hard for
me to follow all these changes in characters and timeline events, but after a
while I got used to her way of writing and I started to enjoy this very much
because I find incredibly interesting the way García could tell such a complex
story, with so many characters and events, in only one book. The thing that interested
me the most was the fact that she refers to real social events, such as revolutions
and wars that really occurred, so she had to combine reality with the fiction she
invented, and I strongly believe this must have been extremely hard. For
example, in chapter #7 (pages 102-119) García talks about the time Domingo Chen
joins the Vietnam War; she explains the trauma that affects him during the war
and that has an impact on his life and personality for the rest of his life. This
is why I admire this writer very much.
3rd paragraph – give some
information about your favorite character in the book. Make the reader attracted to this
character. What are the challenges he or
she faces that would engage the reader of today?
It is hard for me to choose one character because I
find all of them interesting for different reasons and I believe that all of
them can teach something important to the reader. I would like to talk about
Chen Fang because, among all the character’s stories that we can find in this book,
I find it easier for me to put myself in her shoes and try to think how she
might feel. Plus, I admire the strength that this woman has in taking control
of her life and choosing to make a radical change in her life because she is
not satisfied. The first chapter of the book where we start hearing about Chen
Fang is #6 (pages 88-101). She is Chen Pan’s granddaughter. She is born in 1899
and is Chinese, the third daughter after two other girls. Her father left for
Cuba and started a new family, and in this historical period it is a shame to
have so many daughters and no sons; plus, women are not allowed to study and they
are destined to only be wives and mothers. Since Chen Fang’s mother wants to
give an education to at least her last daughter, she lies to Lorenzo, her
husband, telling him that she gave birth to a little boy. No one could imagine
the hard life that Chen Fang is going to face because of this lie. During her
childhood she does not have any particular problem, in fact she can be considered
lucky because she is going to school. Her father is so proud to have a ‘son’ that
he spares no expenses for her education. When she turns nine she is sent to a
boys’ academy and this is the moment where her crisis of identity starts.
During a school trip some of her boy classmates decide to go to a brothel and
bring her with them. There, she has her first sexual approach with a young
girl, that makes her question her identity. Once the money for her education is
all spent, she has to go back home and marry a man that her mom arranged for
her, Lu Shêng-pao.
After sixteen years spent pretending to be a boy she has to change and suddenly become a woman. Her feet are unbound, unlike all the other Chinese women, and she has no ability in women’s duties like cooking and taking care of the house. This makes her gender change hard and painful. The first night of marriage she gets pregnant, but soon Lu Shêng-pao has to move for business reasons. Before giving birth to her son Lu Chih-mo, she receives a visit from her sister with some important news: her old professor found her a job as a teacher in Shanghai. Since the marriage, she has not done anything but taken care of her pregnancy, and she thinks this could be her chance to have her life back. After Lu Chih-mo is born, her mother-in-law pays her to leave the house and the baby, so she does; she goes to Shanghai to accept the job, and starts to teach. In chapter #9 (pages 139-149) we read again of Chen Fang. Here is more than ten years after she moved to Shanghai. At school she meets Dauphine, mother of three of her students. The two start a friendship and soon become lovers. Unfortunately their relationship is not destined to last, in fact Dauphine has to leave to follow her husband’s business to France. After this loss, Chen Fang never recovers and starts to think more about her son, wondering about his personality and life. After a while she turns forty years old and she feels to be neither a man nor a woman; she doesn’t know how to consider her identity. She soon faces a period of poorness, after the Japanese invasion. The last chapter talking about Chen Fang is #14 (pages 223 - 233). She is more than seventy years old now, and she is a political prisoner. She is accused of being a traitor because she is a foreigner and, as a teacher, they accuse her of teaching western culture, against the country. She faces the horror of the prison, and unfortunately she discovers that Lu Chih-mo, her son, is part of the ‘enemy’. Since she is a little girl, she has heard stories about her grandfather Chen Pan, and now she still dreams about going to Cuba and finding her relatives there.
After sixteen years spent pretending to be a boy she has to change and suddenly become a woman. Her feet are unbound, unlike all the other Chinese women, and she has no ability in women’s duties like cooking and taking care of the house. This makes her gender change hard and painful. The first night of marriage she gets pregnant, but soon Lu Shêng-pao has to move for business reasons. Before giving birth to her son Lu Chih-mo, she receives a visit from her sister with some important news: her old professor found her a job as a teacher in Shanghai. Since the marriage, she has not done anything but taken care of her pregnancy, and she thinks this could be her chance to have her life back. After Lu Chih-mo is born, her mother-in-law pays her to leave the house and the baby, so she does; she goes to Shanghai to accept the job, and starts to teach. In chapter #9 (pages 139-149) we read again of Chen Fang. Here is more than ten years after she moved to Shanghai. At school she meets Dauphine, mother of three of her students. The two start a friendship and soon become lovers. Unfortunately their relationship is not destined to last, in fact Dauphine has to leave to follow her husband’s business to France. After this loss, Chen Fang never recovers and starts to think more about her son, wondering about his personality and life. After a while she turns forty years old and she feels to be neither a man nor a woman; she doesn’t know how to consider her identity. She soon faces a period of poorness, after the Japanese invasion. The last chapter talking about Chen Fang is #14 (pages 223 - 233). She is more than seventy years old now, and she is a political prisoner. She is accused of being a traitor because she is a foreigner and, as a teacher, they accuse her of teaching western culture, against the country. She faces the horror of the prison, and unfortunately she discovers that Lu Chih-mo, her son, is part of the ‘enemy’. Since she is a little girl, she has heard stories about her grandfather Chen Pan, and now she still dreams about going to Cuba and finding her relatives there.
I believe that analyzing Chen Fang’s life story today is
very interesting and important to understand how we got to what we have
nowadays in our society. Women have always been underestimated in society, and the
female gender was always considered less worth the rights of a good education,
a good job or a freedom in making choices than men. We often complain for our
consideration in society, but if we analyze cases like Chen Fang, we can
understand the progress we made up to now; even if she is just an invented
character in this novel, she can represent all the women living in Asia or
wherever else in the world during that particular time period. Still at the
beginning of 1900, women were considered as men’s properties, and they were
only necessary to give birth and take care of the house and the children,
besides pleasing the husband when he needed to be pleased. They were not
thought of having needs, ambitions, or dreams; honestly, they were ‘not allowed
to’. Even if the situation is now improved and women study and work with the
same rights as men, we still often hear of cases where women with better jobs
than men are frowned upon or judged, as if they couldn’t have the right to have
a successful life. I believe that our society still needs to change and
understand that humans should have the same rights because, regardless of their
sex gender, anybody can be willing to pursue their ambitions and follow their
dreams; I am sure there are a lot of men around the world who are willing to
spend more time home with their kids, while many women would love to be able to
have a great career and do not feel the need to create a family. For these
reasons I strongly believe that as a society, we should leave to each
individual the chance to create their own life as they wish.
4th paragraph – give some
information about Cristina Garcia and explain how she might have incorporated her
identity into the novel. Why do you
think she wanted to write this book and give voice to these characters?
Cristina García is born in 1958 in Havana, Cuba. She
moved to New York City with her parents at the age of two, but they kept the
Cuban culture active part of their family, and for this reason she still
considers herself Cuban. She lived in first person what it means to change
country, having to deal with a different language, mentality and culture, even
if she was very little. I believe that by writing this novel, she wanted to
inform the reader about Cuba’s history through invented characters’ lives
because she admires this country and has always been attracted to it because
it’s part of her origins. I also think she wanted to open the readers’ mind
about the progress that our society made during this last century, and to make
us understand where we are not very different from that period. She decided to
give voice to those characters because she is expressing the theme of
immigration and everything that comes with it (difference in cultures, opinions
and traditions and problems like slavery, discrimination and prejudice), and I
believe that creating characters that can tell their personal stories is always
better because the reader can reflect themselves in the characters’ and
understand in a deeper way their emotions, feelings and behaviors. These are
the reasons why I believe García decided to structure the novel this way.
5th paragraph – what is the
main message that you take from the book?
I believe that the reader can take more than only one
message from this book; we can learn from this novel many events related to the
history of Asia (especially China) and Cuba (revolutions and wars), the
traditions (like for example the bound feet for chinese women), the mentality
of the society (like for example the slavery of the immigrants in Cuba, the undervaluation
of women in China, with no right for a job or a good education, and the
mistreatment and persecution of people with different ideals). From this book we
can learn how humans got to the point where we are nowadays, to the way we
think and the way we behave; in the past people fought in order to give us the
rights we have today, and this fact makes me admire these people and their
strength. Even if all the characters in the book are invented by the writer,
they can easily represent the reality of the society of the centuries 19th
and 20th. In fact, I believe that Cristina García’s purpose was to
create an invented story for each character to teach to us, readers, real facts
that happened during those years; this way we could understand better what
might have been going on and how people might have been living because we can
learn the events through their voices.
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A Cristina Garcia Novel
Elise
Cristina Garcia is the author of the well-written novel Monkey Hunting. The author is giving a
voice to voiceless people. She is making the reader more aware of the
marginalized people in society such as veterans, prostitutes, women and slaves.
Cristina Garcia does a great job describing each character.
The reader is able to make connections with a slave, a Chinese woman and a
soldier without having any prior knowledge of the struggles they faced during
that era. Garcia writes in a way that allows
the reader to feel what each character is experiencing. For example on
page 152 Cristina describes Domingo’s post-war experiences “Men missing an arm
or a leg, restrained by pain and morphine drips, hurled syringes and urine
bags, whatever was at hand, trying to finish the job the jungle hadn’t”.
However, the author jumps from one character to another without any flow. It
makes it difficult to follow what is happening with each character. The time
line of each character’s life becomes very hard to keep track of. The topic of
what she was writing was very interesting but the way she wrote it made it hard
to understand.
Chen Pan, the main character, is
lured away from his homeland, China, in 1857. He hopes to capture the riches
that await him in mysterious Cuba. Chen Pan, however, quickly learns that he
was tricked into slavery on a sugarcane plantation. Chen Pan eventually escapes
from the plantation and fulfills his biggest expectations by becoming a
successful business owner. Living in a world that tries to keep ethnic
boundaries, Chen Pan struggles with his identity since he looks chinese but has
a stronger connection with Cuba. His identity crisis intensifies when he
marries an Ex- African slave.
Cristina Garcia is an award-winning writer. Her books, having
been translated into fourteen languages, are read around the world. Cristina’s
novels are based on her personal experiences. Her mother grew up in Cuba and
speaking English was very difficult when she moved to America. Translating for
her mother helped develop Cristina’s love for languages. Language was
Cristina’s way to experience different cultures, and changed the way she viewed
the world. Monkey Hunting demonstrates
Cristina’s ability to capture the cultures of Cuba, China and Vietnam.
The main message in
Monkey Hunting speaks about the behavior of people in power, in this case
white males, and how they react to people whom they see as different from
themselves. They often treat those
marginalized people in a terrible way and their power allows them to do so. Monkey Hunting gives a voice to those
who are marginalized in society. The reader’s eyes are opened to the evils in
the world. Some people are consumed with
the idea that they are above other human beings purely on their race, gender or
age. Monkey Hunting demonstrates that
people must not judge one another based on how they look, but rather on the
integrity of their character.
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Juana
Creating an Identity
· The
book Monkey Hunting by
Cristina Garcia has a lot to offer in a short amount of pages. Giving life to
several characters in four generations throughout China, Cuba and America.
Garcia brings strong issues in the world such as slavery, prostitution, war,
sexuality, communism, immigration, and ethnicity. Cristina Garcia makes her
Chinese character immigration, assimilate and finally find his ethnicity.
· Garcia’s
style of writing is challenging but fascinating because so much is said in a
small amount of writing. Her book is challenging to understand because is based
in so much history. The character emigrates changing and integrating a new
culture then has trouble integrating to one ethnicity group. Garcia tells her
story skipping around in time that forces you to build a puzzle to understand
the story.
· One of
the most amazing characters is Cheng Fang a Chinese unwanted girl who lives her
life as a boy. Fang’s life changes continuously because she earns an education
in a period of time where women did not go to school. Her life seems amazing
until her father stops sending money for school and is force to marry a man who
does not love her.
· Cristina
Garcia was encourage to write Monkey Hunting because her daughter is part
Japanese, part Cuban, part Guatemalan, and part Russian Jew. Cristina Garcia
grew up in New York and was amazed by the different ethnicities New York has.
Cristina Garcia research how cultures crashed and became a combination.
Cristina wants to emphases immigration in the world and how hard it is to
construct an identity after the mix of cultures.
· The
main message I was able to grasp from Monkey Hunting was that immigrants
encounter many challenges and the biggest is finding their own identity. People
have patriotism for their country in which they were born but as they migrate
they make a mixture of different cultures and cannot belong to only one. With
that come the challenges of being accepted, language and appearance.
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Martin
Identity Search
Through Time
The novel, Monkey Hunting, by Cristina Garcia
covers many different cases of life challenges through 4 generations of the
Chen family. The challenges include, racism, slavery, immigration, assimilation
and the prevailing integrity of self. I believe the main theme of this novel is
self-identity, because that is the problem all of the characters in the novel
face. Overall, I think Garcia is saying that when a person comes from two ethnicities
it’s difficult to find yourself, especially when both ethnicities have no
similarity in culture and religion.
I thoroughly enjoy the writing style used in
the novel, especially the use of quotes, the quotes in the story really have a
great significance. For example, “Those who speak know nothing. Those who know
are silent.”, and “Caged birds miss their home forest. Pooled fish long for the
deep.” The use of these quotes opens the mind to different forms of
interpretation and makes one think about their own decisions and longings in
life. Another thing I like about the style of writing is the use of foreign
words and translations. I feel that by making the Cuban and Chinese languages a
part of the writing style Garcia created a sense of imagination in the readers
mind, it made the reading seem more real. An example is, “Que quiere con
nosotros?” meaning “What do you want with us?”.
The character that stood out for me, and is
one of my favorites is Lucrecia, because she personifies how a human being should
feel and live. Especially one that has gone through the hardships and
challenges she faced which include: incestual-rape, corporal punishment, harsh
living conditions, and humiliation. Despite of her fear and trust issues she
managed to remain a sane woman and knew she had a point to prove to the people
who saw her as being worthless. Regardless of all the troubles she encountered
Lucrecia became a strong, smart and confident woman which is not always
accomplishable by others whom have faced similar challenges.
Cristina Garcia was born in Havana, Cuba, to
a Guatemalan father and Cuban mother, was brought to the United States at the
age of 2, and considers herself fully Cuban. Although she is half Guatemalan
she doesn’t associate with those roots, meaning she has found her identity as a
person. Her identity itself isn’t incorporated into the novel but her culture
definitely is a part of the novel. I think Garcia wanted to write this novel so
it could serve as an example that similar challenges are faced throughout time.
The characters in the novel represented different generations and mixed
ethnicities.
Self-identity
has been and still today continues to be an issue among not only people with
mixed ethnicities but immigrants too. Although one might consider themselves a
certain ethnicity, ethnicity has nothing to do with who one can be, the word
‘ethnicity’ is only a label. Sure, the blood in one’s body may have ancestry
from different countries but the choice to see oneself as part of a different culture
is entirely personal. An example of this is the character of Lucrecia, she was
African-Cuban by blood and features yet before her death she considered herself
to be Chinese in the liver, lungs, stomach, and heart.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Monkey Hunting
By Christina Garcia
Review by Maria
Christina Garcia traces four generations
of a Chinese family that originated in China in 1857 and ends up the United
States in 1968. Chen Pan leaves China on
a boat to Cuba looking for a better life.
He soon discovers that he is a Chinese slave that must fight for his
freedom. Monkey Hunting shows how hard
life was for four generations of Chen Pan’s family living in Cuba and the United
States. They started out as slaves and
fought for freedom throughout four generations.
Monkey Hunting can be a little confusing
as it goes back and forth. First it is
telling about Chen Pan leaving China on a boat to Cuba. The next chapter jumps to Chen Pan’s great-
great grandson over a hundred years later living in the United States, and the
next chapter talks about Chen Pan’s granddaughter forty years earlier. The author does give a family tree at the
beginning and if you follow the tree you will understand the story.
Chen Fang is the granddaughter of Chen
Pan and one of the most interesting characters in the book. Chen Fang was born a girl and was forced to
live the life of a boy by her mother, so she did not disgrace the family being
another girl. She lived the life of a
boy all the way through college and then one day her mother sold her to another
family to be their son’s wife. Chen Fang
gave birth to a baby boy and was forced by the family that bought her to leave
him. Chen Fang endured many struggles
throughout this book due to her mother’s deception and greed. She finds love, only to have it slip away and
then loses her freedom once again.
Christina Garcia was born in Cuba and was
inspired to write this book after she had dinner one night with her family at a
Chinese restaurant and was offered Cuban black beans. She asked her family why they offer beans at
a Chinese restaurant and no one had an answer.
While looking into this she realized that there is a story to tell about
Chinese and Cuban cultures and how they intertwined with one another.
Monkey Hunting took place over a span of
over a hundred years, but it really makes you stop and wonder what your
ancestors or other people’s ancestors had to endure and what struggles did they
have during their migration to the United States. It also makes you stop and think about people
before you judge them because of their nationality.
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Book Review
By MariCarmen
Adventurous Souls
The novel, Monkey Hunting, by
Cristina Garcia connects people from different countries. She gives
examples of how we go through life passing on our traditions and
adventures from generation to generation. She also portrays men kindness and respect towards women.
Garcia’s
writing style is one of my favorites because she develops a series of
interesting characters and interlaces the plot with historical events
that occurred in China, Cuba, America and Vietnam. For instance, in the
nineteen century there were Africans and Chinese who were taken to Cuba
as slaves to work in the coffee and sugar plantations. Garcia connected
these events in her story. For example, “From his first hour in the
field, it was clear to Chen Pan that he was in Cuba not as a hired
worker but as a slave, no different from the Africans.” (24)
I like all the characters in the story because despite challenging
situations they do not give up. For instance, Domingo migrates to the
Unites States. He is a kind young man who loves his parents and despite
their differences he is not judgmental. He is loyal to the United
States, and even though he is discriminated against he still wants to
fight for the country. The challenging situations in his life did not
deteriorate his adventurous spirit. He continues the course of his life
and at some point he goes to a city in Vietnam where he meets a
Vietnamese prostitute and begins another adventure in his life.
The author of the book, Cristina Garcia, was born in Cuba. She migrated
to the United States when she was two years old. She grew up listening
to stories about Cuba in an environment where there were immigrants
from various countries. It is possible that her own experiences among
multinational environments motivated her to write this great story.
I love the way that Garcia shows how people’s kindness can have a
positive impact on individuals who were victims of abuse, and the
reaction of the people who were discriminated against. She also shows
that despite origins, mutual respect and support can make friendships
and love last forever!
