Cristina García (born July 4, 1958) is a Cuban -born American novelist and playwright. Her first novel, Dreaming in Cuban (1992), was a finalist for the National Book Award . She has since published her novels The Agüero Sisters (1997) and Monkey Hunting (2003), and has edited books of Cuban and other Latin American literature . Her other novels include, A Handbook to Luck (2007); The Lady Matador's Hotel (2010); King of Cuba (2013); Here in Berlin (2017); and Vanishing Maps (2023).
11-511: Monkey Hunting is a 2003 novel by Cristina García . The novel follows four generations of one family: Chen Pan, who leaves China in 1857 on the promise of success in Cuba only to find himself enslaved as an indentured worker; his Chinese granddaughter, Chen Fang, who is raised as a boy so that she can be educated (unbeknownst to her father, who has returned to Cuba as a doctor); and Chen Pan's great-grand-grandson Domingo, who moves with his father to
22-601: A bachelor's degree in political science from Barnard College (1979) and a master's degree in international relations from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (1981). She has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University, and a recipient of the Whiting Writers Award. She is on the editorial advisory board of Chiricú Journal: Latina/o Literatures, Arts, and Cultures . She has
33-587: A daughter. García pursued a career in journalism following graduate school after having worked as a part-time "copy girl" with The New York Times . She obtained an intern position with The Boston Globe and a job as a reporter for the Knoxville Journal . In 1983 she was hired by Time magazine. Beginning there as a reporter/researcher, she became the publication's San Francisco correspondent in 1985, and its bureau chief in Miami for Florida and
44-533: A tree, for example: In Afro-Cuban culture, the ceiba tree is also sacred, a kind of maternal, healing figure to which offerings are made, petitions placed. So absolutely, for me trees do represent a crossroads, an opportunity for redemption and change. In Dreaming in Cuban , Pilar Puente has a transformative experience under an elm tree that leads to her returning to Cuba. Chen Pan, in Monkey Hunting , escapes
55-472: The Caribbean region in 1987. In 1988 she was transferred to Los Angeles . She terminated her employment with Time in 1990 to write fiction. Of García's first novel, Dreaming in Cuban , García said, "I surprised myself by how Cuban the book turned out to be. I don't remember growing up with a longing for Cuba, so I didn't realize how Cuban I was, how deep a sense I had of exile and longing." The book
66-597: The United States, where he enlists to fight in Vietnam. Cristina Garc%C3%ADa (journalist) Garcia has taught at universities nationwide, including UCLA; UC Riverside; Mills College; University of San Francisco; University of Nevada, Las Vegas; University of Texas-Austin; and Texas State University-San Marcos, where she was the 2012–2014 University Chair in Creative Writing. García's novels explore
77-688: The fact that "there is no one Cuban exile." In 2007 she also said that she "wanted to break free of seeing the world largely through the eyes of Cubans or Cuban immigrants. After the first three novels—I think of them as a loose trilogy—I wanted to tackle a bigger canvas, more far-flung migrations, the fascinating work of constructing identity in an increasingly small and fractured world." At that time García described this "bigger canvas" as including "the entrapments and trappings of gender," partly because "it would be easy, and overly simplistic, to frame everything in terms of equality, or cultural limitations, or other vivid measurables. What's most interesting to me are
88-556: The memories, histories, and cultural rituals of her Cuban heritage and that of the diaspora in the United States and globally. García was born in Havana to Cuban parents, Francisco M. Garcia and Esperanza Lois. In 1961, when she was two years old, her family was among the first wave of people to flee Cuba after Fidel Castro came to power. They moved to New York City , where she was raised in Queens , and Brooklyn Heights . She earned
99-404: The slow, internal, often largely unconscious processes that move people in unexpected directions, that reframe and refine their own notions of who they are, sexually and otherwise." While García has expressed a desire to avoid overt and propagandistic politics the influence of her heritage is made clear when she discusses the symbolism and characters in her work. She has said, about the symbol of
110-495: The sugarcane plantation under the watchful protection of a ceiba tree…In A Handbook to Luck , Evaristo takes to living in trees as a young boy, to escape the violence of his stepfather. He stays there for years, first in a coral tree and then in a banyan. From his perches, he witnesses the greater violence of the civil war in El Salvador and speaks a peculiar poetry, born, in part, of his co-existence with trees. "King of Cuba"
121-682: Was nominated for the National Book Award . Her second novel The Agüero Sisters (1997) won the Janet Heidiger Kafka Prize . García has reported experiencing unease in relating to other Cubans—both with those still in Cuba and those in exile in Florida. Some question why she writes in English. Others take issue with her lack of engagement in anti-Castro causes. She has said she attempts to emphasize in her novels
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