The women, apolitical housewives and factory workers, just wanted to be seen. They were the storytellers, the memory keepers, and I listened from behind closed doors, from around corners. I found them fascinating. I found it very comforting to write with their voices. In spite of all the backbiting, the women banded together. They had the children in common; they had things to talk about. The men had more trouble expressing their feelings, so they suffered a strange rigidity that permeated the rest of their lives. They disappeared into television and silence.
Why did you choose to write about the 1960s?
It has always been interesting to me that my family escaped one revolution and landed smack in the middle of another one, to which they were mostly oblivious. Maybe it was because this country is so big that events don’t knock on your door the way they did back in Cuba. Maybe it was the language barrier, or because they were starting brand-new lives and needed to stay focused on the day-to-day, or because they were done with politics, they’d had it, they were in no mood. But we landed here at the time of the civil rights movement, political assassinations, campus revolts, the sexual revolution, the women’s movement, and on and on.
I tried to bring this into the novel through Barry O’Reilly, but I also didn’t want to dwell too much on it because they didn’t. To the early Cuban immigrants, whatever was going on with the Americans was their business. It all happened at a distance. But I was aware of it, as much as a kid can be. We lived just outside of Los Angeles during the Manson murders, and a kid from my high school, Steve Parent, was the first one killed at Sharon Tate’s house. I was friends with his younger brother, Dale. To this day, I don’t think my parents know this, or if they do, I don’t think it has any particular significance to them.
I also wrote about the ’60s because we knew so little. We didn’t know how long Castro’s reign would last. There was still hope of returning and claiming what we’d left behind.
The theme of exile surfaces throughout the novel, not just in the moments when each of the three women leaves Cuba. For example, Graciela goes through a series of exiles—from her school friends, her family, her husband (and, thus, the women of her community), the island of Cuba, et cetera. How do these experiences define Graciela’s story line and influence her motivations? Does it make a difference whether she is exiled or she exiles herself?
Graciela would like to fit in, but it’s not in her nature, not in Palmagria, not in Union City. She makes unconventional choices and this sets her apart. Even when all the women are coming to her house to get their nails done, Graciela is the outsider. I also think that Graciela is not as smart as she thinks. She’s driven and passionate, but not a good strategist. Imperio is right when she says that Graciela “lets her heart and not her brain” make her choices. That, to me, is the key to Graciela’s story. But it’s only true to a point. Graciela does change, she does mature, and just because Imperio and Caridad can’t see it, or don’t want it to happen, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t.
Still, Graciela’s most significant exile happens in her parents’ house, the three years she spends there before she leaves the country. It’s specifically during that time that Graciela realizes she has nowhere to go but up, which is why her progress in Union City is so swift. Until that point Graciela has believed that she will be rescued, but after that point she concludes that it’s up to her to save herself. Life in the United States is like a prison sentence for Imperio and Caridad, but for Graciela it’s the ultimate freedom. She recognizes the land of opportunity. She works to shed Palmagria and immerse herself in life. Hard as it is with Imperio and Caridad constantly bringing up the past, Graciela starts to reinvent herself.
Imperio and Caridad seem to depend on Graciela in a way. They can’t wait to criticize her or to center the gossip on her, but they also can’t seem to let go when Graciela starts to move away from their circle.
I see Graciela, Imperio, and Caridad standing knee-deep at the shore. In front of them is the United States, Cuba is behind them. They are thirsty and tired, and eager for dry land. But with every heavy step they take forward, there is the pull of the undertow, the erosion of the sand beneath their feet. I think all three of them wish they could put the past behind them, yet without the past they have no sense of identity. For Imperio and Caridad it’s easier to focus on Graciela’s past. To review their own lives is much too painful.
As Graciela starts to make her way in Union City, to break out on her own, Imperio and Caridad frantically try to pull her back. They are her undertow. She is a part of their memories, and if she drifts away, how long before it’s all gone, how long before they all become other people, how long before they become foreigners as well? Painful as it is, they anchor themselves to Graciela.
Graciela was always the outsider, less dependent on Imperio and Caridad and somewhat impervious to their judgment. Her mistakes were youthful miscalculations of her own making. She sets out to undo her wrongs with willful determination, which is the only way she knows how to do anything. I don’t want to go metaphor crazy, but while writing I saw Graciela growing wings, and Imperio and Caridad constantly trimming them. Emotionally, they can’t afford to let the bird take flight.
Telenovelas were originally one of the main sources of Spanish-language television in the United States. How does the telenovela influence the women’s friendship and what message does it convey?
Our apartments in the U.S. were small, and when we finally moved to houses, they were small too. There was no way to escape the telenovelas, whether you sat down to watch them or heard them through the wall as you tried to do your homework. In an inconsistent world, the telenovelas were the only element of consistency. There they were—on at seven p.m., eight p.m., nine p.m., and ten p.m. All night long every weeknight. Originally I tried to stay away from them in the novel, even considered removing any mention of them in one draft, but it was impossible. I could not see these characters without the telenovelas. They were such a powerful influence, and I had to surrender to them. I tried to use the telenovelas in a way that I had never seen before—to take the reader to the days of the early telenovelas, to show their evolution and how they could be used to create a smokescreen over the harsh realities of immigrant life. You’ll notice that whenever things get tense in the van, the talk turns to the telenovelas.
Questions and topics for discussion
1. What do you think is the significance of the novel’s title? What information does the title convey? What function do the telenovelas serve in the novel? What function do they serve for its characters?
2. Graciela’s frame of mind changes over time. Identify at least three significant moments of such change. How do you feel about Graciela at these points in the story? Did you sometimes sense your loyalties shifting as you read?
3. Caridad and Imperio rarely describe their own problems, while they focus intently on Graciela’s shortcomings and scandals. Did it change your understanding of Caridad and Imperio when, at the end of the novel, Graciela provides a window into the dramatic hardships that they both suffer? What does the author make us understand about Caridad and Imperio by allowing their secrets to come to light in this manner?
4. How does Tomorrow They Will Kiss change or contextualize your understanding of Cuban American identity? Do you see this story as representative of the experience of many Cubans who came to the United States in the early 1960s?
5. What did you know about the Cuban Revolution before reading this book? What do you think you gain from reading a novel built around such an event, as opposed to reading a more strictly historical account?
6. Why do you think the men in this story are so absent from the plot? What do you take from that?
7. In the penultimate chapter of Tomorrow They Will Kiss, Caridad says, “I had never seen Graciela laugh so much, she could hardly stand from laughing. Is that what happiness looks like? I wondered. Like insanity?” What did those few lines make you feel?
8. What lessons d
o we draw from Graciela—at an individual level, and also in terms of the larger ideas of assimilation and acceptance?
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