Latin American Magic Realist Voices – Flashcards

Read the excerpt from Cristina Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban. I was only two years old when I left Cuba but I remember everything that's happened to me since I was a baby, even word-for-word conversations. I was sitting in my grandmother's lap, playing with her drop pearl earrings, when my mother told her we were leaving the country. Abuela Celia called her a traitor to the revolution. Mom tried to pull me away but I clung to the Abuela and screamed at the top of my lungs. My grandfather came running and said, "Celia, let the girl go. She belongs with Lourdes." This was the last time I saw her. How does the structure of the excerpt add meaning to the passage?

Read the excerpt from Cristina Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban. Lourdes considers herself lucky. Immigration has redefined her, and she is grateful. Unlike her husband, she welcomes her adopted language, its possibilities for reinvention. Lourdes relishes winter most of all—the cold scraping sounds on sidewalks and windshields, the ritual of scarves and gloves, hats and zip-in coat linings. Its layers protect her. She wants no part of Cuba, no part of its wretched carnival floats creaking with lies, no part of Cuba at all, which Lourdes claims never possessed her. Which sentence is an example of magic realism?

Read the excerpt from Cristina Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban. If it were up to me, I'd record other things. Like the time there was a freak hailstorm in the Congo and the women took it as a sign that they should rule . . . Why don't I know anything about them? Who chooses what we should know or what's important? I know I have to decide these things for myself. Most of what I've learned that's important I've learned on my own, or from my grandmother. What does the excerpt reveal about Cristina Garcia?

Which excerpt from Cristina Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban best exemplifies magic realism?

Which strategy would be least useful for helping students monitor comprehension of a text as they are reading?

What is the advantage of reading from three different perspectives in Cristina Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban?

Read the excerpt from Cristina Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban. My mother says that Abuela Celia's had plenty of chances to leave Cuba but that she's stubborn and got her head turned around by El Líder. Mom says "Communist" the way some people says "cancer," low and fierce. Which element from this excerpt best characterizes Garcia's story as one of magic realism?

Draya is a student who does not understand the following sentence from Dreaming in Cuban. She reads the newspapers page by page for leftist conspiracies, jams her finger against imagined evidence and says, "See. What did I tell you?" Which strategy would best assist Draya in making the excerpt easier to understand?

Which sentence from Cristina Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban is an example of magic realism?

Students who have read a section of a text and do not understand it should