The story “We Came All the Way from Cuba so You Could Dress Like This?” by Achy Obejas reflects a war for self-realization in a world where everyone has an expectation about what a child should grow up to be. Granted, no one is an island and before every individual attains adulthood and self-sustenance, they live through the exertions and sacrifices of others. These sacrifices and exertions are offered based on a hope and expectation that the recipient of the sacrifice will live to make the sacrifices proud. This, in turn, should be considered as a sacred obligation for the individual to live up to the said expectations, or should it? Each and every human being alive have their own destiny, chatted by their character and aspiration (Das, 2012) . In line with the adage about the soul always wanting what it wants, a human being will either live to these aspirations or live to regret a life not lived. The two statements above create a major impasse that has faced many people under the sun. This is premised on the age-old question of whether to live to please those whom we owe so much in life or to live to personal aspirations and interests. Whichever way a human being elects to live life , someone somewhere will be disappointed, yet nothing would be worse than disappointing the self.
Through generational change alone, it is almost impossible to be in touch with those who have placed the highest expectation within an individual. The narrator in the story is but a child of ten years when they leave Cuba on a boat headed for Miami (Obejas, 1994). They are eventually rescued and brought to the US where after some struggle, they commence a comfortable living. Of course, the narrator will grow up, not only in a different environment because Cuba is different from the USA but also within a different age set that sees life differently and has different aspirations. The old generation believes in following the rules and doing what is customarily right as well as politically correct while the new generation believes in doing what is expedient for the self. It is, therefore, impossible for the narrator to fit into the kind of life that her parents would expect of her, seeing that she is unable to see the world as they do (Das, 2012) . She has to stop being their little girl and be a lady after her own heart. This is because she would rather disappoint them every now and then or disappoint herself every moment of every day .
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
If ever a choice is made to please others instead of the self, this task will be impossible as well as unachievable because the aspirations of even those closest to an individual will not rhyme. Assuming that the narrator decided to forsake her personality and be whom her parents wanted her to be. Instead of being a lesbian, she perhaps would be straight (Weston, 2010) . From then on, she would be in a quagmire on whether to please the father or the mother as their aspirations for her contrast with one another. The father needs to have a daughter for life and, therefore, wants her to have a career so tough that she will never find time for love (Obejas, 1994). The mother needs grandchildren and for her daughter to have a stable family. She, therefore, wants the narrator to have the kind of a job that will enable her to get home early, find a good American husband and make two wonderful grandchildren for her. Instead of endeavoring into the insurmountable task of seeking to conform to the wills of others, it is much easier to declare “this is who I am” (Weston, 2010) .
Even in the extremely unlikely event that an individual is able to please those closest, others will still come out of the woodwork and demand to be pleased too. Within the aforesaid stories are a very interesting character who represents how even strangers will try to mold the life of an individual and make the individual fit into their own mindsets about them. When the narrator’s family reaches Miami, they encounter a Catholic volunteer who seeks to provide charity for them (Obejas, 1994). It has to be noted that albeit they are illegal immigrants escaping from Cuba, it does not mean that they are poor. The volunteer, however, expects them to be so poor that they need charity even for basic needs such as clothes . She, therefore, almost forces them to take the charitable items. The family takes them if only to avoid being rude, yet they know they will never need them. The volunteer may be well meaning but wrong and inappropriate (Moreno, 2012) . The same applies to strangers who try to argue how other people are living their lives wrong and what is right or wrong in society. As it is impossible to please everyone, the only option is to take a stand and state “this is who I am”.
The totality of the foregoing confirms that the only right way to live is to find the self, establish personal aspirations about life and live them to the uttermost. As long as a lifestyle is not illegal and is pleasing to the individual living it, then it cannot and should not be called wrong. Living single in celibacy or even in promiscuity, being gay, lesbian or bisexual are all lifestyles pleasing to the individuals living them. Those closest may not understand the individual but they have their own lives to live. There will also be strangers who will equally seek to have a say in an individual’s life. Seeking to please others is seeking for failure and disappointment both for the self and also for others. The solution is to find the self and proudly live as one aspires.
References
Das, A. (2012). Negotiating a new identity for U.S Latino literature in Achy Obejas’s Ruins. Label Me Latina/o , 2 , 1
Moreno, M. (2010). “The important things hide in plain sight:" A conversation with Junot Díaz. Latino Studies , 8 (4), 532
Obejas, A. (1994). We came all the way from Cuba so you could dress like this? stories . New Jersey: Cleis Press
Weston, K. (2010). Me, Myself, and I. In Theorizing Intersectionality and Sexuality (pp. 15-36). Palgrave Macmillan UK
