Perez-Firmat's Life On The Hyphen

Ebb and Flow: Cuban-American Reality “Lucy, honey, if I wanted things Cuban I`d stayed in Havana. That`s the reason I married you, ‘cause you`re so different from everyone I`d known before.” -Ricky in I Love Lucy. This quote is from the iconic show from the 50`s, I Love Lucy, but also is used in Sustavo Perez-Firmat`s piece called Life on the Hyphen. In Perez-Firmat`s piece, Perez-Firmat relates the Cuban-American experience and how it is made up of several different generations who all have to go through three steps of adaptation to their new homeland. These three steps of adaptation are the substitutive stage, the destitution stage and the “here we are” stage. These three stages are illustrated through the generations of characters with
Celia del Pino is the character that the novel begins with as she is the oldest in this family line, she represents the old, conservative world of Cuba and her perspective creates a contrast to the experiences and feelings of her children and grandchildren. The novel starts off with Celia in order to set the time period and to represent the conservative viewpoint of a Cuban during the reign of Fidel Castro. Celia, “equipped with binoculars” and “wearing her best house dress” sits in her “whicker chair” guarding the “north coast of Cuba”(3). These opening lines of the novel illustrate how Celia loves Cuba and wants to protect her country from any further invasion or war. She represents the first generation as she remembers the Cuban Missile Crisis very vividly. She even goes on to say how she sees no sign of “gusano traitors” and that she could spot another “Bay of Pigs invasion” before it even happened(3). This reference to this famous historical event epitomizes the characterization of Celia and the generation she represents. She represents the generation who is for the revolution and the dictator Fidel Castro, and would probably be very against the fact that part of