Andrea O'Reilly Herrera

The Matrix of Oppression and Privilege: Theory and Practice for the New Millennium

This article discusses a creative, collaborative model the authors have developed between the Ethnic Studies and Womens Studies programs on their campus that provides a paradigm that other universities around the country might learn from. After situating the program within a historical and national context, this article examines the specific challenges faced within the university setting and offers a range of institutional strategies that have proven successful. The authors examine their collaboration, which consciously mirrors and attempts to implement the growing movement in teaching and research toward an intersectional approach to teaching about privilege and oppression. Within the university context, this framework has been institutionalized within the curriculum as well as the structure of the program. In the new millennium, this framework can serve as a model for other campuses.

Cristina García, Dreaming in Cuban

Taking as its point of departure the 1959 Cuban Revolution, Cristina Garcia’s debut novel Dreaming in Cuban (1992) directly explores what the author herself characterized as the effects or “costs” of the revolution and the consequent diaspora “on individuals and families.” Garcia treats this central theme by chronicling the lives of three generations of a family divided politically and geographically as a result of the revolution.

“Inheriting” Exile: Cuban-American Writers in the Diaspora

Public dissent in Cuba—over ideological differences or as a result of disintegrating economic and social conditions—has been witnessed on a large scale by the exodus that followed in the wake of the 1959 revolution. Since that time, more than one-tenth of Cuba’s present-day population has migrated to the United States alone.1 Although the exodus is ongoing, historians have tended to divide the Cuban Diaspora into several distinct periods. The initial wave occurred between January 1, 1959, and October 22, 1962, when all air traffic between Cuba and the United States ceased as a result of the Missile Crisis. As historian Maria Cristina Garcia notes, this first wave brought approximately 248,070 Cubans to the United States including some 14,000 children who were sent off the island unescorted as part of an initiative called Operation Peter Pan.2 Despite the cessation of air traffic in 1962, some 56,000 Cubans migrated to the United States via third countries such as Mexico, Venezuela, and Spain from October 1962 to September 1965. As Garcia points out, the postrevolutionary migration out of Cuba followed a logical socioeconomic progression. Cubans of the elite classes were the first to leave, followed by members of the professional middle class.