A homecoming without a home: Recent U.S. Cuban writing of diaspora

Cuban writing in the United States surged to the center of national attention in the 1990s with the publication of Oscar Hijuelos's The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (1990) and Cristina Garci's Dreaming in Cuban (1992).1 Oscar Hijuelos was the first Latino writer to win the Pulitzer Prize. Cristina Garcia was the first Cuban-American author to gain acknowledgment on the national scene with her debut novel. Both authors are the children of Cubans who came to the United States as part of the largest out-migration in the island's history after Fidel Castro came to power in 1959. In contrast with other post-1965 migration from leading sending nations such as Mexico and China, which are conceptualized as economic labor-flow immigration from the island, this emigration from Cuba has been largely conceived as political exile from a socialist country in terms that cement post-Cold War ideological divisions.