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University Settlement
Society
Lower East Side, Manhattan
April 15th,22nd, and 29th, 1993
Dreaming in Cuban,
1992
National Book Award Finalist, Fiction
 Ms.
Garcia conducted a bilingual workshop for a Mothers
Reading program, sharing with a group of fifty single
mothers how her first novel, Dreaming In Cuban, traces
the lives of women in her family, from Cuba to the United
States. Each of the women had received a donated copy
of Ms. Garcia's book from Random House, Inc., and a
Spanish translation was provided by Espasa Calpe, the
Spanish paperback publishing company. In addition to
reading selected chapters from the book, many of the
women prepared written memoirs, sharing personal experiences
about growing up in the
United States and the challenge of
combining an American experience with
their Hispanic heritage.
The women read their personal narratives aloud to an
audience of their peers, and presented Ms. Garcia with
a theatrical interpretation of one of the chapters from
her book. For most of them, the event represented their
first experience speaking English at a public gathering.
During subsequent visits, the women read poems by American
authors of Hispanic origin and wrote poems and short
prose collaboratively. Their writing was collected for
an on-site publication and presented to Ms. Garcia.
This year's Settlement House program,
co-sponsored with United Neighborhood Houses, featured
four author residencies in Settlement Houses on Manhattan's
Lower East Side, Harlem and the Bronx. National Book
Award Finalists Dorothy Allison, Jessica Hagedorn, Michael
Harper and Cristina Garcia participated in three to
four day residencies, meeting with single mothers, teens,
high school dropouts, English as a Second Language students
(ESL), and adult readers studying for their High School
Graduate Equivalency degree (GED). All participants
received copies of the visiting author's book in advance
and many produced creative written responses which explored
a range of literary genres, including poetry, memoir,
short fiction, and biography.
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