The Creative Writing’s Role in the Formation of a New Linguistic Home in Exile: A Critical Stylistic Analysis of Christina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban (1990)

Abstract

This paper depicts how exiles are psychologically damaged by language loss and how the latter engenders identity crises that affect the characters and destabilize their identity constructs. Linguistically speaking, although expatriates living outside their home countries master English more than their native words, they can circulate both locations comfortably. However, both languages fail to provide them with an efficient means of expressing their identity. The main question raised is whether language contributes to the understanding of the self or complicates the maturation process and engenders an identity crisis. It is for this particular reason that the researcher has chosen Cristina Garcia Dreaming in Cuban (1990) to portray how both languages are simultaneously used, creating a third language structure, this narrative that blends English with Spanish without making the reader notice the shift and enabling both the writer and the protagonist to express their bicultural identities. The aim of the current study is to investigate how linguistic meaning is used as a vehicle for constructing identity through a critical stylistic analysis of Christina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban (1990). The study concludes that this novel cannot be classified as either nostalgic or creative, but blends nostalgia with creativity so as to give birth to a new category of exile writing. The latter preaches hybridity as a remedial reconciliation capable of healing the emotional shock caused by exile.