Mapping Cuban Affective Landscapes: Storytelling and White Cuban Women’s Affect in Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina García

Abstract: This article revisits Cristina García’s novel Dreaming in Cuban in light of current Latinx studies debates around blanqueamiento , colorism, and anti-Blackness. I argue that García’s book maps a constellation of affective landscapes that determine the identities of white Cuban women from different generations while navigating Cold War cultural politics. These affective landscapes include Cuban women inhabiting exile, loneliness, and trauma, attaching and detaching their emotions to virtual and physical places. My analysis identifies the political, racial, and gender paradigms that define these affective landscapes. It also demonstrates how the emotional infrastructures that support them mimic and disrupt processes of blanqueamiento , anti-Blackness, and colorism in the US and Latin America.