Achy Obejas is a Cuban-American writer and translator focused on personal and national identity issues, living in California. She frequently writes about her sexuality and nationality and has received numerous awards for her creative work.
“The Sound Catalog” belongs to the story collection The Tower of the Antilles describe like this by the publishing house Akashic Books:
“The Cubans in Achy Obejas’s story collection are haunted by islands: the island they fled, the island they’ve created, the island they were taken to or forced from, the island they long for, the island they return to, and the island that can never be home again.”
How can we apply this description to our story today?
Cultural assimilation is the process in which a minority group or culture comes to resemble a society’s majority group or assumes the values, behaviors, and beliefs of another group whether fully or partially.
How does the story “The Sound Catalog” by Achy Obejas represent the tensions between the goals of assimilation and Cuban cultural retention in the diaspora?
How does this story use the enhancement and loss of perception to explore topics of dislocation and empowerment?
Class presentation (s)
Open Group Discussion
Michael J Bustamante argues that “there are two widely familiar versions of the Cuban story.” In one “the ‘triumph’ of the Cuban Revolution marked the definitive end of one period of the island’s history—nearly six decades of ‘pseudo-republican’ scandal following the island’s ‘mortgaged’ independence in 1902—and the beginning of true liberty under the banner of revolutionary change. “On the other, “the Cuban Revolution represented not a fulfillment of nationalist dreams but an unmitigated tragedy. For many of those who left the island in the 1960s, Cuba’s turn to socialism made the prerevolutionary period look like a paradise lost, transforming their homeland into an island in chains.”
How do these two competing narratives clash in Achy Obejas’ story? How Cuba is remembered by the different characters?
.After reading pages 59-60 from “The Sound Catalog” by Achy Obejas compare the characters’ contrasting understanding of and desires for their respective home countries.