49 pages • 1 hour read
Ana MenéndezIn Cuba I Was a German Shepherd
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2001A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Beta“The Party” and “Her Mother’s House”Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Story Summary: “The Party”
The story is set at Máximo’s restaurant, where he has organized a party to welcome back Joaquin Rivera, who has been released from a Cuban prison. Guests include characters from other stories, among them Mirta, Hortencia, and Raúl. The story is narrated in the third person from Ernesto's point of view.
Ernesto reminisces about an afternoon in Cuba before the revolution, when he, Máximo, and Joaquin rode a bus to the coast to dive for lobsters. This memory, “before politics and leaving,” is “like an amulet” against his other memories (110). He recalls how Joaquin had enough life “for the three of them” (110). He was nicknamed “The German” because of his fair skin and unusual strength. He read poetry, became involved in the student movement, and organized marches.
Joaquin’s plane is late, and Ernesto is grateful for the delay, hoping that being tired will take the edge off their meeting. He and Máximo reminisce about the lobster diving trip, after which the police stopped them. Ernesto remembers Joaquin faking an epileptic episode to get away, though Máximo recalls that Ernesto faked an asthma attack instead.
Hortencia and Ernesto are surprised to see each other at the party. She reveals that, “before all the politics,” Joaquin was involved in the theater and was a “marvelous” (111) performer. She adds that everyone would have been better off if Joaquin had stayed in theater.
Raúl reveals that Máximo is thinking of selling the restaurant because his wife Rosa is sick with cancer. He tells Ernesto that it was good of him to come, then calls Mirta over to “brighten the evening for two tired old men” (114). Ernesto notices that Matilde is quiet. They ask after Mirta’s mother, who has left Miami but sends her love to Joaquin. Raúl says that, more than anything, Joaquin was a ladies’ man, but Ernesto objects that “most of his conquests were in his own mind” (117). Matilde reveals that Joaquin used to bake when upset—once, he asked her for a recipe. Mirta says none of these descriptions match her mother’s, which depicted him as “serious and troubled” (117). An argument breaks out in the front of the restaurant about dissidents in Cuba.
Mirta asks how Ernesto knew Joaquin, a question he finds polite but empty. He replies, “Not very well” (118), prompting Raúl and Matilde to look at their hands. He wonders what other stories people have told about Joaquin. Ernesto tells Mirta they had a friend in common when they were students stridently opposed to the dictator. The friend died young in prison because of something Joaquin did. Ernesto becomes weary of all the “pretty words” being scattered “like rice at a wedding” (119) and wishes for a blank slate, a single truth to pin to the wall and memorize. Later, he reveals to Mirta that his brother died in prison.
An old woman follows Ernesto around the party. When he tells her that the party is for Joaquin, she whispers, “El asesino” (112), or the murderer. She reminds Ernesto of his mother, who waited in vain by the window for his brother to return from the capital.
Story Summary: “Her Mother’s House”
Born two years after the revolution in Miami, where her parents met, Lisette travels to Cuba on a reporting trip. She seeks out her mother’s family home and discovers a disconnect between memory and reality. Lisette had been married to Erminio, a son of Cuban immigrants who made poems out of her news articles, but the marriage ended in divorce. Lisette wanted to love him, but often longed to be alone. She thinks of this when she sees billboards on every street in Cuba celebrating the revolution. The billboards are “reassurances built upon their own disintegration,” as were the “empty” (124) I-love-you’s she and Erminio exchanged.
Lisette’s father had fled Cuba because of Batista, while her mother’s wealthy land-owning family had fled Castro. As a child, Lisette had thought of Batista and Castro as one “all-powerful tyrant,” “who shot poor workers in the fields and stole her mother’s house” (121). Her mother described the house longingly as a grand plantation manor with stained-glass windows, a “graceful stairway laced with gardenias,” and a “marble fireplace” (126) installed by her father, the only man in Cuba who could grow roses.
Her mother had not wanted Lisette to go to Cuba, telling her that she “wouldn’t find the answers to her failures there” (124), a remark that hurt Lisette. Once in Cuba, Lisette vacillates between feeling hopeful and connected, and feeling despair that the country is slowly killing itself.
The map her mother reluctantly provided leads to a military installation guarded by a single soldier who lets Lisette pass unremarked. When she asks field men for directions to the Aruna house, they recognize the name and take her to the house, now occupied by a couple, Matún and Alicia, who used to work for Lisette’s grandparents. One of the field men, Lisidro, notes that Matún was “the only man who could grow roses in Cuba” (127).
Alicia greets them at the gate and tears up when Lisidro introduces the Arunas’ granddaughter. Lisette covers Alicia’s hand with her own, but Alicia pulls away. She believes Lisette has come for the house. Lisette assures her that she only wants to see it. When she finally does, its small windows, cracked front door, and flat red tile roof dumbfound her.
In the kitchen, she meets Matún, who hugs her and gives her a photo of her mother taken in the same spot they are now sitting. He laughs as he reminisces, praising her grandparents and noting, “In some ways, it was better then” (131). He refers to himself and Alicia as the home’s caretakers, but Lisette makes it clear that she does not want the house.
Matún insists on giving her a tour. He notes what a good life he and his wife have, “Thanks to our government,” which gave them the land after her grandparents left, and “the grace of God” (132). As she leaves, Lisette presses a bill into Matún’s hand, calling it a small gift. He accepts it without comment.
After she returns from Cuba, her parents throw a party where she is asked about the house. Lisette maintains her mother’s version of the family home, lamenting that a soldier confiscated her camera. She remembers Erminio, his poems, and the way he “held her steady against the day” (135).
Story Analysis: “The Party” and “Her Mother’s House"
The final two stories in the collection bring characters from previous stories into relationship and reflect on the nature of truth, memory, and storytelling.
Set at Máximo’s restaurant, “The Party” gathers characters featured in other stories, including Matilde and Raúl, Mirta, and Hortencia, while also introducing a new character, Ernesto. The occasion is the release from prison of Joaquin. Although “The Party” does not specify why Joaquin was imprisoned, it implies that he participated in revolutionary activities. His imprisonment explains why he could not show up for his meeting with Mirta and her mother in “Baseball Dreams,” which takes place around the time of the revolution. In “The Party,” the reader gets the sense that Joaquin’s actions caused Ernesto’s brother to be sent to prison, where he eventually died. The narrator explains that “the revolution came for” (119) them both, but does not reveal who was on which side, repeating the obfuscation and uncertainty threaded throughout the stories. The collection’s intention is not to champion a particular political side but demonstrate the destructive force of political divisions.
During the party, various characters share memories about Joaquin. Hortencia reveals that he enjoyed performing. Matilde shares that he enjoyed baking. Ernesto remembers a carefree day diving for lobsters followed by a close call with police, though he and Máximo recall differently how they managed a quick escape. Ernesto’s more troubled memories surround the imprisonment and death of his brother, which were not Joaquin’s intention but nevertheless the result of his actions. Ernesto’s realization highlights how political divisions can become accidentally destructive.
The party guests’ experiences of Joaquin differ from how Mirta’s mother has described him. Mirta’s relationship to Joaquin is never specified, but conversations and events suggest that he is her father. He may not have appeared for his meeting with Mirta and her mother because he was imprisoned or involved in overthrow of the Batista government. This is why Mirta believes that her father would have made that meeting if he had stuck with baseball. It is also why her mother was speaking urgently into the phone the night of the aborted meeting: Most likely, she is learning about his prison sentence. Finally, if Joaquin is Mirta’s father, her presence at the party and particular interest in the guests’ memories of Joaquin makes more sense.
The different versions and memories of Joaquin portray him as a multi-faceted person, who was creative and passionate, dedicated and driven. At times, guests express surprise at stories they hear about Joaquin, as if his political passions erase everything else about him.
Through their jumps in time and point of view, combination of realist and magical realist elements, and use of allegory, the stories in the collection resist easy categorization. Human motivation is too layered and unfathomable to allow for tidy boxes. The collection asserts repeatedly that it is long-term relationships rather than isolated events that reveal the meaning and outcomes of human behavior.
The interplay between truth, memory, and storytelling is a dynamic that Menéndez revisits throughout the stories, in particular “The Party” and “Her Mother’s House.” Ernesto and Máximo remember the same story differently. Each story about Joaquin reveals another facet of his character. None of them is complete on its own, but put together, they create a layered, complex portrait that nears the truth. Lisette’s mother remembers her house in grand terms that do not match the house Lisette visits. This can be a matter of perspective, since objects and events look different from childhood to adulthood. Because Lisette’s mother left Cuba as a child, the house remains in her memories as it looked to her childhood self. The effect is reminiscent of the way the man from “Why We Left” leaves Miami to preserve it in his memory as the sacred place where he lost his baby son.
From another angle, being forced to abandon a grand house has become a core part of Lisette’s mother’s narrative about herself as a Cuban exile forced to fall on hard times. Through Lisette, Menéndez invites readers to consider the extent to which truth can be shaped by both memory and intention, and to wonder at what point that reshaping renders it no longer truth.
Early in the story, Lisette claims the past cannot be replayed “like an old song” (123), yet this is what she strives to do for her mother. When she returns from Cuba, Lisette upholds her mother’s memories of her house, lying that it has survived the revolution in state. Whether her mother knows this is a fiction remains unspecified and is perhaps irrelevant. Memories will make their own truth. This “truth” may reflect what really happened, or it may not.
At the end of the story, Lisette thinks about her ex-husband and his poems. She imagines him pouring her coffee and wrapping his arms around her, holding “her steady against the day” (135). From the safe distance of time, she can allow herself to feel nostalgia for a relationship that she willingly gave up.
