Today’s post is prompted by The Red Dress Club, a virtual writing society.
This is my first piece for the group and I welcome TRDC readers to my blog.
I know I get under your skin, disrupting your ear with my tenor. I can hear it in your response. Soft spoken and calm, attempting to evoke peace in my language. Your tone only charges my fervor. Cabrona! Have you forgotten what it means to be Cuban?
You damn American kid. Pretentious and righteous. Entitled and demanding. Standing erect because of luxuries this country affords you rather than by the steel of your spine. Educated and opinionated, yet too busy to earn a dollar. I judge you because you are of me, and I will not apologize. I own your future like I own my house, depositing payments and building equity through years of sweat and tears. Cabrona! This is what it means to be Cuban!
I came here for you, the thought of you, the hope of you. I adored you a generation before you even became you. Struggled and sacrificed so you could triumph in democratic glory, speak your freedoms without fear of abuses. I left my homeland, fled to a strange land, and mastered your American Dream. All with the bass in my throat, with the volume on high. My cadence never ceasing. Cabrona! THIS is what it means to be Cuban!
My voice is low and, indeed, it is loud. I speak with passion that infiltrates my heart, riding from the mountain tops to command your existence with my dictatorship. I take no prisoners and make refugees with my words. It can frighten the faint of strength, faint of passion, those faint of resolution to live each day wholeheartedly because the next can be stripped from their belonging by a ruthless coup d’état. Cabrona! This is what it means to be Cuban!
I know I get under your skin. Your outer covering that desperately wants to assimilate with your born identity. I know my thunder storms through your ear, like the wind of a foreign language, making it impossible to hear my message. So I will quiet, to evoke understanding, and plead you to listen: under your skin lies a culture of beauty, a people of warmth, a language of romance. My choices have set these lives in motion, and thus any conceivable opportunity is yours, but I beg you not to forget. That part of your being which connects you to me.
In my end, el amor de mi familia was the only war worth fighting for. Love that transcends all borders, needs no translations, exists in all reincarnations of life.
Mi querida Cabrona, to be under your skin means to be closer to your heart.
Mi querida Cabrona, to be under your skin means to be closer to your heart.
This is what it means to be Cuban.
What can I say? That is powerful, and so what I need to hear! I’m so glad to see someone remembering that luxuries are just that – LUXURIES!
Oh how I love this! I don’t come from migrants, the only personal experience I have with someone uprooting and moving to a completely foreign land, foreign language, foreign people, no friends or family is via my mother in law, but still, that’s not my experience. But I completely hear you. I live in a country where you can have a voice without fear, all your necessities literally at your fingertips and (almost) all the freedom in the world, and yet I still hear complaining, from my mouth too, but hopefully not much (I know I complain about complainers alot which is very hypocritical). Why do people refuse to look back? To their roots and to the struggles their ancestors went through to get them to where they are now?
And all that aside – DAMN you’re a writer!
Why oh why have you been keeping your talent so quiet???? I hope you don’t mind, but I’m so posting this on my facebook.
This post is so strong, so powerful!
You had so many excellent lines in here: “rather than by the steel of your spine,” “I adored you a generation before you even became you.”
But the part that keeps echoing in my mind is, “Your outer covering that desperately wants to assimilate with your born identity. I know my thunder storms through your ear, like the wind of a foreign language, making it impossible to hear my message.” for the images, the power, and yes- the anger, too. Wow.
I left another comment, but it didn’t go up. I loved this one. I liked how you kept the phrase, “this is what is means to be Cuban” throughout the story. You also increased the intensity of it as the story moved.
I think you captured what the first generation parent must feel about their second generation children.
Like Galit said there were tons of great lines in this piece. My favorite was, “I know my thunder storms through your ear, like the wind of a foreign language, making it impossible to hear my message.” There so much imagery there.
This one is definitely a winner:~)
This was a very powerful piece. I can appreciate all of the passion that you put into your words.
I enjoyed so many lines but my favorite is the last one, “to be under your skin is to be closer to your heart”.
Thanks for sharing-
Wow. I am so moved by this. Identity is such a hard thing–especially for first generation Americans. I loved this line. “I own your future like I own my house, depositing payments and building equity through years of sweat and tears.” If we’re really honest with ourselves don’t we parents feel like we “own” our kids? But we don’t. We absolutely don’t. This piece has a musical feel with the refrain of “this is what it means to be Cuban.” I loved that too. I am a white mom of Black kids and I worry so about who is going to teach them what it means to be Black. Concerning the writing, what you have written is as much poetry as prose. You have done with incomplete sentences and fragments what poets do. It works here.
Thank you, Ladies! I battled with pushing publish for a long time; next write up won’t take so much out of me, I hope.
Honest Convo Gal, my child is of mixed race as well! I think being mixed has become more of its own identity than ever before, so hopefully your babes won’t have to worry about “being Black” as just being themselves. But I can certainly identify with your concerns. Also, thank you for the critique of the writing; I had a hard time staying out of a poetic rhythm when I was in the groove, so I just went with it.
Thank you again!
So good and relatable. I have mixed race babies too. I grew up here in Canada but your piece resonated with me. Great job. I added myself to your followers.
a powerful and emotional response, and full of fantastic imagery and lines! Thank you for writing this and sharing it
Fantastic!
I loved the repetition of “this is what it means to be Cuban.” It tied the whole piece together and pushed me forward.
There were so many phrases that were just brilliant. The “spine of steel” gave me chills and the “adored you a generation before…” part made my throat tight.
Beautiful piece.
I live in Miami. This post rings true on so many levels…
This made me smile deep inside of myself. I know that voice! Loved this it was melody and grace and powerful. Love that the last Cabrona was spoken in love.
This is beautiful in it’s power.
I don’t have this experience, but you write very strongly the feelings of that parent. That parent who wants so much more for his child.
I can feel it.
Well done!
I too squirmed when I read “I own your future…” because I felt the same way as Honest Convo Gal, which made it go over and over in my mind later on when I was in the shower. And then I just got it. I think you must meditate on the second half to really understand the statement. We own our children’s futures through sweat and tears because their childhood sets up their adulthood and we are the biggest influences in their childhoods. A child from a family where they are given love and attention, education and help setting out financially, has a very different future to a child who is neglected, emotionally, physically, financially etc. No, I’m not saying that someone neglected cannot have a great future, but their journey is very different to someone who already has so much love and stability. And really our “future” is not the end destination, if there is one, but our journey.
I’ve been realising much to my dismay lately that my childhood has indeed affected me as an adult. I’ve spent years and years and years denying it to myself, but it’s just true and there’s nothing I can do to reverse that. And I’ve realised that the biggest part of my childhood, was my parent’s reaction to what I thought was the biggest part, and not it itself (sorry if you can’t follow that).
So I get exactly what you’re saying, and really enjoyed the meditating on that line to get there.