“Only in Miami is Cuba so far away”: The politics of exile in ana menéndez's in Cuba i was a German shepherd 1

Abstract

In her focus on the location and positionality of Domino Park in Little Havana in Miami — a place where Cuban exiles gather to play dominoes —'Ana Menéndez raises a number of questions about the translation of a culture from one geographical location to another, and the process of constructing a cultural identity in exile. The very fact that the name, “Little Havana,” underpins the incomplete and negotiated process of linguistic translation urges us to ask: how is Cuban culture being translated in Domino Park and for what audience? And as Walter Benjamin suggests: what is the relationship between acts of linguistic and cultural translation when they are also determined by the relationship between the original and the translated geographical locations? Are the cultural dynamics played out daily in Domino Park an echo or a fragment of the original? Does it really matter? For as Gustavo Pérez Firmat suggests, this see‐sawing between cultures defines the Cuban‐American experience. The aim of this paper is to trace the dynamics of theories of home and authenticity expressed in a tour of Domino Park, as also presented in the fiction of Menéndez, in order to suggest that home and authenticity are not givens, but experiences and realities one develops.