Ron Eyerman's Dreaming In Cuban

Before the Internet and the invention of technologies that allowed us to discover artifacts of the past, oral and literary sources of knowledge were the basis of recorded history. To truly understand history, though, is to understand memory as a source of history and how it can be constructed to preserve the past. Memory can be defined as a recollection of information from the past, and while it can be fabricated, memory, especially in literary texts, is most useful when it overlaps historical findings. Memory serves as a central theme to the story of Dreaming in Cuban. From Celia’s letters to her Spanish lover to Pilar’s desire to remember Cuba, memory is what ties the del Pino women together throughout the novel. Memory is a constructive

As defined by Julia Kristeva, intertextuality is the idea that all texts are made possible through the texts that came before it (Lemaster). In other words, each text builds off of the ideas of previous texts in order to make a new argument. Similar to this idea, identity is not created by an individual nor a single event, but rather it is an accumulation of past memories and experiences. In his article, Ron Eyerman explains how memory influences the changes in individual and collective identities and how memory helps to “orient who they are, why they are here, and where they are going” (Eyerman 161).Therefore, it is appropriate to say identity is intertextual since each generation’s collective identity builds off of previous generations. As memory changes a collective identity over time in order to appropriately reflect past experiences, the ideologies of these groups also change. The ideologies of a collective group play an underlying role that affects how an individual approaches a situation. In other words, memory and intertextual identity are not only sources to remember history by, but also factors that create and shape

Memory cannot be absolutely erased from an individual’s mind, for that is what an individual’s mind is composed of - memories. Thus, as more technological sources become readily available to the public, memory still cannot be disconnected from history. What is created - documentaries, photographs, recordings - is based on the collective identity of an individual and this is similar to memory. Dreaming in Cuban and the famous propaganda movie, I Am Cuba, serve to create the history for both the support of Castro’s revolution and of the emigration from Cuba. Consequently, recording history with technology has limitations as well, since it is still a representation of the past and is also vulnerable to the intentions of composers and readers. No matter the form, though, memory always helps to recreate