Fighting the Opposition: Lack and Excess in Cuban and Cuban-American Narratives of Selfhood

Abstract

This essay presents a comparative discussion of two novels — one Cuban, one Cuban-American and both by women writers — that examines the roles played by the oppositional tropes of lack and excess in their respective portrayals of post-revolutionary Cuban female identities. Zoé Valdés’ La nada cotidiana (1995) and Dreaming in Cuban by are examined here via three shared thematic concerns — food, the female gendered body, and artistic expression — in which portrayals of lack and excess serve as vehicles for revealing and negotiating the oppositions often identified as inherent to the ‘Cuban condition’. Ultimately, I argue, these two literary works challenge the simplistic dualisms often used as paradigms for demarcating female Cuban identities in the post-1959 context, both within the national border and throughout the Cuban-American diaspora.