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Issue 103 Spring 2008
THE BOMB BLAST
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Christina García. Photo: Norma I. Quintana.
There are many things that can be said about Cristina García: That she is one of the most important Cuban American voices in U.S. literature. That she was born in Havana but moved to New York City with her parents after Fidel Castro came to power. That she grew up in Queens, Brooklyn Heights, and Manhattan. That she has a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Barnard College, and a Master’s degree in International Relations from Johns Hopkins. That her first job was a marketing position with Procter and Gamble in West Germany, which she held for three months. That she has been a journalist for Time. That from 1990 onwards she has written fiction full-time.
Or one could talk about her gifted daughter Pilar. That she speaks Spanish to her daughter and her friends, believing that we will learn by osmosis, because life cannot be contained in one language, because beauty is too fluid for one tongue. It has been rumored that she sometimes has an uncomfortable relationship with Cubans, both on the island and in Miami because she has generally not engaged in anti-Castro activism. That she is a Cuban deeply embedded in the Salvadoran community. That she thinks there are many ways to be Cuban, and human and alive. That she is generous and giving and loving and paints, and dances and has a complicated and deeply beautiful spirituality. That she loves antique stores and thrifting and old style movies and the French Avant Garde. That her Cuban beans and rice and chicken taste like you’ve always imagined they should.
That in her new book, A Handbook to Luck, we meet three children: Enrique Florit, from Cuba, taking care of his flamboyant but often hapless magician father; Marta Claros, struggling in the slums of San Salvador, forced to leave school to help support her family; and Leila Rezvani, a wealthy surgeon’s daughter in Tehran, whose mother seems concerned only with appearances, and whose her father is an out-spoken opponent of the Shah. We follow them over twenty-six years through intersections and near misses, through personal sacrifices and forced exiles, as Cristina weaves stories of tenderness, possibility, elegy and caretaking all of which culminate in a tale full of light, joy but also tragedy.
I can say all that, but mostly I want to say this:
Cristina García is my friend. That she teaches me every day how to carry history, memory and kindness with an easy grace. I want to say that she is a gifted writer who writes books that matter. I want to say she is a joy in this world.
Cristina García published Dreaming in Cuban, which was nominated for the National Book Award, followed by The Aguero Sisters, Monkey Hunting and now, A Handbook for Luck. She has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University, and is the recipient of the Whiting Writers Award.
