Confessions of a JCP (The ‘C’ Is for Cuban)
The following is an excerpt from Gigi Anders’s new book, “JUBANA: The Awkwardly True and Dazzling Adventures of a Jewish Cubana Goddess” (Rayo, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers).
It’s the classic Latina position: Be pretty, get married, and shut up.
I am not a classic Latina.
I am a Jubana, a Cuban Jewess.
And when you’re a bride-to-be Jubana, you have to know you’re heading straight into the mondo bizarro jaws of cross-cultural hell. Especially if, like me, you’re an only child (which I am, except for my two American-born younger brothers). My mother, Ana, also a Cuban-born only daughter with two brothers, was treated by her indulgent parents like the quintessential Jewish Cuban Princess (JCP) she was and would always be, Fidel Castro’s revolution be damned. The princess royal’s parents, Boris and Dora, had emigrated as destitute teenagers from Russia and Lithuania to Cuba in the early 1920s. And just like my Polish-born paternal grandparents, Leon and Zelda, they spoke Yiddish and Hebrew with Cuban accents, Spanish with Yiddish accents, and English with Yiddish-Cuban accents.
Boris, born Boruch Benes, was a self-made man and Reform Jew. He started out selling handkerchiefs, bolts of lace, and fabrics, and eventually became the wildly prosperous owner of Camisetas Perro (literally translated, Dog Undershirts — it sounds way better in Español), sort of the Victoria’s (and Victor’s) Secret of its day. He and Dora threw their only daughter the grandest marital bash of that winter season. At my mother’s 1954 December wedding in Havana there were 750 guests. That’s muchos silk undies. (Think wedding in “Goodbye, Columbus,” only everyone sounded like Ricky Ricardo or Ricky Ricardo with a Yiddish accent.) Mami’s only job on that day was to show up in perfect makeup; a heavy, white, hand-embroidered, velvet dress; smile; and do whatever she was told. Which she did. She agreed to have virtually zero input but her attractive presence and choice in groom.
But I’ve examined Mami’s hand-tinted bridal portrait in my parents’ Silver Spring, Maryland, living room. I know what really lies behind the twenty-one-year-old bride’s crimson-colored smile.
“I’m goheengh to get joo, sohkehr.”
* * *|
Since I am a Jubana, my culturally imposed and sole raison d’être is to replicate all things Mami, who is deemed the archetype of Jewish and Latina femininity. However, I personally cannot recall a single instance in my youth when I fantasized about my wedding day. Not the dress, not the ring, not the groom, nada. Obviously that meant there was something wrong with me. I was interested in books, poetry, writing, animals, Tab, fashion and celebrity magazines, TV, music, cooking, cigarettes, and movies. But Mami had imagined that magical conjugal scenario for me, right down to the gehfeelteh feeshy, over and over from the moment of my conception — one of the only times the woman has ever planned ahead. That was what her mother had done with her, and her mother before her, and so on and so on, all the way to Creation.
My point, and I swear to God I have one, is that there are really only three things you can do with a Jubana baby daughter, and these were all premeditated while I was still floating blissfully unaware in Mami’s womb:
Control Gigi’s life and appearance (somebody’s got to).
Plan out Gigi’s wedding (a party for Mami and her 750 closest friends!).
Figure out how to afterward cram 750 into la sala, the living room, for the baby shower(s).
That’s the drill, that’s the deal, that’s the traditional Jubana Way. The only way for a girl.
That’s why I’m here.
Verdad?
You might think that by now assimilation would have smoothed out all my Jubanity. Honey, I’ve tried melting into that so-called melting pot. Nothing happened. I stuck out like an unkillable pig bone in a stew of mushy black beans, or frizz-prone hair on a rainy day. As Mami Dearest says, “Honey, joo could put a paper bag over joor hayt an’guess what? Jood steel be conspeekuohs.”
* * *|
From Mami’s point of view while I was growing up, if you worked hard without cutting corners, asking for favors, using your feminine wiles or your ethnic minority-ness, you were a sohkehr. When I was a schoolgirl and Mami saw me poring over homework for hours, she’d get a stricken, pained look and say, “Ay mamita, joor workeengh so hard.” As if making an effort for more than two minutes was akin to working on a lesbian chain gang in the Mississippi Delta heat: an unattractive, backbreaking, deadening thing. Way too masculine a pursuit for a girlie gal. That quintessentially Cuban position is violently at odds with both the typical working-class illegal economic immigrant position, which is to work like a mule until you’re dead, as well as classic Judaic values, which stipulate that talent is beautiful, that it’s good to be smart — and that applies to girls, too.
When you’re bicultural, oops, make that TRIcultural (I’m American, too), not every message you’re given by your family and Juban community is synchronized or harmonious. Sometimes they switch into Cuban expectation gear, other times only the Jew ’tude will do, and at other times a nonethnic North American performance and persona is what’s called for. Wouldn’t you be a Mesopotamia trying to integrate all that? It’s one thing to be fluent in Spanglish, which I obviously am. But being triculturally fluent, now that’s an art form unto itself.
Which self was I supposed to be, and when, exactly?
Gigi Anders is a special correspondent for The Washington Post.
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