Nostalgia, Shame and the Transplanted Cuban: "la cubana arrepentida"

Abstract

Literature can illuminate and extend our understanding of the affect of shame. In this paper, I will use extracts from my fictional works, published and in progress, and other fictional work and poetry by Cuban and Cuban-American exile writers to illustrate some aspects of shaming in relation to the experience of being a Cuban-American migrant in the United States, particularly relative to the sense of exilic nostalgia for the lost homeland. I will also look at how shame is used by the minority culture to control, erode or slow the process of assimilation and to try to maintain the illusion of the superiority of the minority culture.