University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Finding a voice: essays and columns from the Cuban American experience

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Finding a voice: essays and columns from the Cuban American experience

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FINDING A VOICE:
ESSAYS AND COLUMNS FROM
THE CUBAN-AMERICAN EXPERIENCE

by
Monica Marie Castillo

______________________________________________________________________________
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(SPECIALIZED JOURNALISM – THE ARTS)
August 2016

Copyright 2016 Monica Castillo

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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my parents for not only making my trip to Cuba possible but also
for enriching my childhood with their stories. My thanks also goes to Sasha Anawalt for
encouraging me to develop my thesis in a more personal direction, Peggy Bustamante for
understanding those changes to this endeavor, and Kenneth Turan for always finding the passion
in my writing.

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 2
Abstract 4
1. Introduction 5
2. “Going Home For The First Time” 6
3. “The Movie Memories My Mother Taught Me” 11
4. “Hunger For Memories: Cuban Food In The Age Of Diaspora” 17
5. “Stop Saying You Want To See Cuba Before It Changes” 22
6. Part 2 Introduction 25
7. On Online Harassment 26
8. On #OscarsSoWhite 30
References 33

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Abstract
Discussions about identity politics are more prevalent than perhaps ever before thanks to
the democratization of publishing platforms online. Many writers are attempting to better share
their truths on personal topics, including this Cuban-American film critic. The thesis is a
reflective exploration of a writer’s first trip to her parents’ home country at a pivotal time of
change in Cuba’s history. The paper’s style is from a more personal point of view that then
extends into column-style opinion writing. Topics such as representation and Hollywood and
gender equality online will be discussed by an author retracing her roots and building her future.

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1. Introduction
When I first pitched this thesis, I intended on capturing Cuban cinema at the twilight of
the American embargo that prohibited U.S commercial trade with the island in 2015. But as with
many best laid plans, it changed. Encouraged to write in a more personal style, I began scribbling
essays about my trip to Cuba. My writing then expanded to opinion pieces to strengthen my
voice and conviction. Where I could have easily written about Cuban cinema from a more
academic standpoint, I now had free range to challenge myself with a form of writing with which
I was unfamiliar.
I had strong feelings about movies before I knew how to properly articulate them. When I
was growing up, emotions came before my words. That can happen when your second language
is English. If you’re teased enough about your accent, as I was when I started going to school,
you learn to quiet your voice. You doubt it and don’t assert it until you can’t take another minute
of silencing yourself.
My moment came in the middle of a rough time in my undergraduate years. Friends and
majors were changing, and the call to express myself blared louder and louder. I was invited to
write for school’s online magazine when I knew almost nothing about criticism but something
about having something to say. It was the beginning of a new career, possibly one of the furthest
removed from my path as a pre-med biochemistry student.
These writings are an extension of that film critic’s voice, now much more sure about
what it has to say. The personal essays are musings on my trip to Cuba while the op-eds are more
about other current issues like online harassment and diversity in entertainment. Both are very
clearly in my voice and from my perspective as a feminist Cuban-American writer.
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2. “Going Home For The First Time”
Cuba was the place I grew up with, but not in. That was America, the place both sides of
my family fled to in different decades. Talk to other relatives about how they came to the US,
and you might be able to piece together a rough history of the island once known for its gangster-
run casinos and prized soft-sanded beaches.
But I knew a different history: one where my mother would help my grandfather develop
photographs so she could get money for a movie ticket; stories of how her family would walk
together down tree-lined streets to the local cinemas in Vedado on Sunday, and how abruptly, in
the '70s, the vendors who hawked popcorn and candies outside the theaters disappeared when
rations dried up.
After listening for years to my mom's memories and stories from newly escaped cousins,
I decided to go back to cover the 2015 Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano in
Havana.
"I left, why do you want to go back?" she asked me.
My mom and abuela reluctantly helped arrange my trip so that I’d stay with my great
uncle, one of the few Cuban members of my family I knew in person rather than in pictures. Less
than two months before my trip, he passed away. I felt guilty for not having gone sooner.
Instead, my aunt took me in, and my cousin offered to help me navigate the city without a map
or Wi-Fi, and hell, sometimes no electricity (apagones, or blackouts, were so routine it was
customary to carry a flashlight at all times). Several family members passed on tips on what not
to eat to skirt food poisoning, to douse myself in mosquito repellent to ward off Dengue Fever,
and which cabs were more likely to swindle visitors.
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All the stress, worry and sadness melted away the moment I woke up on the plane over
the luscious green campo (countryside) dotted by the occasional tin-roofed farm. When we
landed at the José Martí airport, the plane erupted in applause with some feet-stomping and
sniffles. A woman behind me burst into tears, saying it had been decades since she'd seen her
island. It was my first time, but I resolved to keep my face straight as I headed into the airport to
have my bags searched.
Nothing could have prepared me for the humidity or my first sight of Cuba outside the
airport. If my Northern or Western friends complain that Florida's tropical climate feels like
swimming in a lake, then stepping into Cuba's was like wading into a hot waterfall that pushes
you down into the soggy earth. After the cadeca (where one exchanges money) and customs, I
exited into a pen surrounded by Cubans eagerly awaiting relatives. If you couldn't find your
family, there was a line of overzealous cabbies ready to sweep you to the capitol. Not too long
after, my prima scooped me up in the biggest hug as if she had known me all her life. We did in a
way, but only through pictures in our grandmothers' houses.
She was only a few years older than I, married and a beneficiary of Cuba’s free education
system. She was a practicing physician before she pulled out of the profession in order to try and
leave the country. As I bounced in the backseat of her car (seat belts are not required here), I
strained to take in the blindingly bright greenery on either side of us, the chipped paintings,
billboards singing praises of the Revolution and the occasional José Martí statue. We ran errands
around town, and, at a mall that's half covered by malanga vines, we bought my first round of
groceries. At the top of my to-do list is to stroll the Malecón, Havana's famous walkway by the
sea featured on many postcards and Anthony Bourdain travel specials. For me, it was where my
mom and her brothers would carefully climb down the rocks to go swimming. At night, my
8

cousin, her husband, and I strode past fishermen using nothing but a hook, string and their hands
to catch a last minute meal. She and I took our first picture together as the sun sets behind us. We
travelled on, and her husband pointed northward joking that I should yell to let my family in
America know I'm okay. I looked out into the horizon slowly disappearing into darkness, the
direction my mother tearfully faced before disappearing into the hull of a small boat bound for
the United States three decades ago. I think of the thousands of desperate Cubans who have also
since fled towards that horizon and the many who didn't make it.
I heard plenty from tourists who had been there before: “the people are wonderful” and
“the land feels stuck in time;” be sure to “get pictures of the cars and cigars!” I'm glad outside
visitors like the Cuban people--they may be talking about my family after all--but they're people
just the same. I wince at every reporter playing Columbus, claiming discoveries of landmarks
and culture that long pre-date their media appearance. My Cuba is more than an idealized pastel
postcard from the ‘40s. It is a real place full of beauty and pain, of dire need and generosity. I
knew I could never go back to the Cuba my parents left; time and scarcity have seen to that. But
I went to see what was left of my roots: my family that has never seen me in person and the one-
screen movie theaters I had heard so much about growing up. The cinemas where my mom
watched her first Disney movies, Japanese samurai films, French comedies, cheap Italian spy
flicks and Soviet period melodrama still stand in Havana.
One of the first stops my cousins took me to was to the "Kafe" connected to the Karl
Marx Theatre, the biggest cinema on the island. The theater's triple balcony and proscenium
arches hosted the country's first Communist Party Congress in the early '70s. Later that decade,
my mom would return almost every day to watch her first Barbra Streisand movie, Hello Dolly!
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Now I returned for the 37th premiere of Havana's largest film festival to watch my first movie in
Cuba.
The opening night gala was just like any other, people dressed up and festival banners
and posters littering the lobby. But with festivities transplanted to the Karl Marx Theatre, things
were slightly different than at Sundance or South by Southwest. Women in heels braved mud and
worn-down sidewalks while men stood in circles outside the theater smoking and greeting each
other. I posed next to a Charlie Chaplin impersonator moments before Chaplin's daughter
Geraldine took the stage. The auditorium was large, but spartan from the lack of trimmings and
white walls. The chipped paint seen on almost every street corner plagued the inside of the
theater too. The concrete floors held on to threadbare red seats, the kind my mom remembers
from the ‘70s. After a 45-minute orchestral intro and opening remarks, the opening night movie
El Clan began. At this screening, and every showing after, the audience readily talked back at the
screen. "Se lo merece!" would be thrown at any character who they thought deserved what was
coming to them. Scandalized whispers of "Ay que malo" followed every bad guy's dirty deeds.
When it was time for the good girl to throw out her good-for-nothing guy: "Bótalo pa carajo!"
The phrase my mamí uses when listening to relationship problems, "que sinvergüenzada," was
repeated with alarming frequency. It was as if I was sitting in a large living room with my
family, where everyone is encouraged to speak their mind during the movie. Never once having
been here before, I felt strangely at home.
Not a day after the festival frenzy, the Cuban government surprised us all. Without
warning or vote, it announced travel restrictions on doctors, my cousin included, that would take
away their right to leave the island by the end of the week. She had four days to flee Cuba, her
home, her family and husband, or risk staying on an island with dwindling rations.
10

It's not what I had in mind when I fought for press accreditation to the festival. Months of
planning this trip pales in comparison to the throngs of Cubans waiting outside the US embassy
attempting to argue their case for a visa out of the country to rejoin family. The process can take
months, if not years. It was difficult to watch the process of leaving one's home country on the
other side. I'd only been a part of the celebratory reception, never watching the personal chaos of
uprooting your life at a moment's notice.
That was very much a part of my parents' Cuba, and now it's a part of mine too.

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3. “The Movie Memories My Mother Taught Me”
My mom spent the first 14 years of her life in Cuba before she and her family were
uprooted in 1980. Bringing only the clothes on her back and childhood memories, she moved to
a country she was taught to despise in school—I’m not sure she ever really made peace with
those lost years of resettlement and alienation. She never let my sister and me forget where we
came from. It’s an inescapable part of who she is and who I am. I grew up listening to the stories
of her time in Cuba, of how radically different my life would be were we to have remained on
the island and how lost we were between two cultures. My family is scattered, and I’ve yet to
meet them all.
One thing she passed on, intentionally or not, was her love of movies and how closely
they were tied to her memories of Cuba. We used to dress up for the movies and go as a family.
Even when I was little, my dad would grouse at how often we went. His family was not one for
the movies when they had a TV at home in the States. My mom, however, grew up walking to
the movies every weekend with her brothers and parents. It was simply what her family did in
Havana.
Growing up, I never truly appreciated my mom’s esoteric taste in film. She would find a
random French movie on cable, and tell my sister and me to watch it with her. She’d wake us up
on Saturday mornings for a public access show sponsored by a local Indian restaurant that would
play a solid hour of Bollywood music videos. When a movie was too melancholic or abstract,
she would complain it was “too Russian” for her. So before I went to the island for the first time,
I asked her to map out her memories of the theaters and films she saw in Cuba.

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My mother and I don’t only share a love of film, but we look very similar as well. Our
faces and body type are almost the same, but her skin, eyes and hair are just a few shades darker.
It’s not uncommon for the two of us to be confused as sisters. Even on opposite coasts, we call
each other often. Inquiring about which movie theaters she grew up going to in Cuba wasn’t out
of the ordinary. “I remember my first movie was when I was four or five,” she told me. “I
remember there was a long line to get in. I had a little popcorn and a little candy while watching
a big, big screen. It was special.”
Although my mother’s family had a black and white TV at home, going to the movies, “a
big screen full of color,” was a spectacle to be remembered. Mom doesn’t remember what she
saw that first day (only that it was cartoons), but the feeling that this was something special never
left her. She still enjoys the excitement from going to the movies. It seems to be another trait I’ve
inherited.
The name of the theater escapes her. It’s been decades since she last saw its tiny entrance
and crowded aisles. “I can envision the walk from my house—it wasn’t very far,” she
remembered. “We used to do it every Saturday and Sunday. Saturdays with my mom and
Sundays with my mom and dad.” They would walk down Havana’s Fifth Avenue, a scenic path
modeled on New York’s famous street before it became a commercial hub. “In the center of the
avenue, there was a clock tower with gardens all around. I saw pictures from the ‘50s of Fifth
Avenue in New York, and it looked just like the one in Cuba. Families would spend the
afternoon there.”
At times, my mother’s family would visit relatives on their way to or from a theater.
“Especially on the weekends, it was mostly families at the movies. You didn’t see a lot of
13

teenagers by themselves. You’d see families with extra kids because a mom would take a friend
of the kids.” She admitted not everyone there could indulge a movie habit like her family; her
dad worked two jobs to afford the small luxury.
According to her, Cuban theater owners were sticklers for the country’s age-based rating
system. Even if you were a few months shy of 13, you could be turned away. My mom missed
out on all of Sean Connery’s James Bond films because they were rated above her age. And if a
theater oversold tickets to a show, it was buyer beware. “There would be no seats, and you would
have to walk out to wait for the next show. Refunds are the American Way.”
“I remember seeing [Disney’s] Sleeping Beauty in theaters and I loved Aristocats! It was
my absolute favorite. I was ten when I saw it.” Then she mused, “I don’t know how we got so
many Disney movies in Cuba, but we got them.” They must have been apolitical enough to pass
Cuban censors, who would turn away movies with Revolutionary-tinged scripts about “rebels”
and “empire” like Star Wars. My mom caught Return of the Jedi after she moved to the States,
unaware of the craze that preceded it. “No one on the island had heard of it.”
But even the censors couldn’t say no to Barbra Streisand. “I saw Hello Dolly! when I was
13 years old, and I fell in love with Barbra Streisand right there and then,” she giggled at the
memory. “I think I saw it that week five or six times. The movies were only a peso, so my father
[a busy photographer working construction surveys and school portraits] could afford for me to
go to the movies everyday if I wanted to.”
I watched Hello Dolly! with her many times before, heard her singing along with the
movie as she taught me to sashay like Dolly does during her big number. What sounded so
familiar to me became estranged when my mom told me where she watched it: The Karl Marx
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Theatre that was near her home in the quiet Havana neighborhood of Miramar. Never had I
thought about the first time she had seen the movie, and never did I picture her watching it in a
large auditorium with concrete floors and minimal trimmings aside from thin burgundy curtains
flanking a worn stage. Did it feel weird to watch an American musical with opulent dresses and
dance numbers in fancy restaurants when sitting in a theater named after one of the forefathers of
socialism? Or was she so enraptured by Streisand’s talent, no amount of communist-capitalist
irony was going to rain on her parade?
She was also obsessed with the Japanese samurai films imported under the banner name
of “Samurai Oichi.” She loved romantic Polish films, Italian Euro-spy knock-offs, British
costume dramas, Spanish and French comedies, especially those of Louis de Funès. “Even
though you had to read, the jokes transcend, just like Charles Chaplin.” Long before I fell in love
with my first film genre, silent comedy, my mom had grown up with all the classics. “Every
Sunday morning on the TV, they played all the silent movies. That’s how I got to meet Charles
Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, and Buster Keaton.” Chaplin is a reoccurring figure in the Cuban
world of film. There’s both a restaurant and a theater bearing his moniker on the same street,
perhaps for no greater reason than the Little Tramp was once a suspected communist persecuted
by Yankees like J. Edgar Hoover. He was one of the most favorite movie stars in the world who
found unlikely allies in the fledging communist nation. It must be some kind of kismet, without
knowing of his connection to Cuba, I had become a diehard fan.
Although she teased that I could get as “miserable as a Russian movie,” my mother didn’t
see many of those films in theaters. “Most of them were about hunger prior to the revolution, so
period pieces,” but not the opulent ones she adored. “Some were inconclusive, they had no
meaning, and you didn’t get anything from them. Was there a purpose to the movie to begin
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with?” The Soviet imports failed to connect with the young girl growing up in a Communist
country experiencing its first economic freefall in the ‘70s.
Cuban cinema was all but closed to her; the state sanctioned productions dealt heavily
with sex and were rated for much older audiences. “As I kid, I only saw two good Cuban
comedies. One was called The Twelve Chairs and the other was a comedy about the Revolution,
which was more propaganda than anything,” she said. My mom remembered there were
renegade filmmakers making movies to criticize the government. They would send their rouge
films abroad to festivals, only to be imprisoned as dissidents at home.
During our interview, my mother stammered. “You know, I used to love getting popcorn
and candy as a kid. There were little kiosks outside the theater to buy snacks. But as I got older,
that did not exist anymore.”
I froze. It was the rare moment I recognized something from Cuba that wasn’t from my
mother’s memories. I had read about the ‘70s economic bust that is more or less credited with
killing The Golden Age of Cuban Film which gave us movies like Memories of
Underdevelopment, Death of a Bureaucrat, Lucia, and The Adventures of Juan Quin Quin. If
these titles sound unfamiliar, that’s because many of these treasures aren’t as widely celebrated
or discussed in Euro-centric film circles. A shame really, but it is the shared fate of the Latin
American film industry, still terribly under-examined and often forgotten by film scholars.
It’s strange to think of going to the movies while growing up without the sound of
popcorn crunching, drink swishing, and candy rattling. For me, it’s the difference between going
to an awkwardly silent press screening or watching a movie with a rowdy audience at a chain
theater. The noises, the chatter, the long concession stand lines are deeply ingrained childhood
16

memories, yet they weren’t experiences my mom would enjoy again until after she made the
frightful escape north. About a decade after visiting her first American movie theater, she
brought me to my first movie. Like her, I don’t remember what was on the screen, but it was a
bright cartoon that filled the big screen with color.

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4. “Hunger For Memories: Cuban Food In The Age Of Diaspora”
Something about home cooking attracts people to your plate of food like flies at block
party. They don’t have the sheen of a Food Network dish or a presentation worthy of Wolfgang
Puck, but something about its homely appearance assures its authenticity. Even if it’s a lumpy
flan mix made from scratch.
There is something personal in breaking out a traditional dish. It’s a cultural exchange,
something that represents the giver’s past. Like my mom and grandmother, my home cooking is
rooted in Cuban recipes. It’s a mix of staples, like black beans and white rice, with little flares of
citrus, seasoning, or sugar. They range from sweet to savory, salty and fried. We have our thick
Cuban breads that are properly baked with a palm frond, aromatic seasonings that cling to pork
meat overnight before cooking, rooty malangas to sop up any stray lime mojo juice, and the
sweet toughness of turrón, a nutty bar that can break your teeth if you’re not careful. Heavy on
meats and starchy dishes, the goal of our meals is to make you feel full and warm.
I don’t know every recipe in my mom’s or abue la ’s head, but that’s okay. I’m still
perfecting my mojo marinade to get too worked up about old school Cuban-style black beans that
require hours to prep. It’s been ages since I last assisted with a full-pig body lechón that would
need to be cooked in a metal box outside. I was still catching lizards as a little girl in Tampa,
Florida, chasing my primos when I last waited for lechón to slow cook in the metallic caja china
in the backyard.
I worked up my appetite before going to Cuba over the course of relatives’ stories. I
wanted to chew on sugar cane stalk like my mom did when she was little or bite into freshly fried
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empanadas like my grandmother makes in her old neighborhood. And there was my most recent
Cuban discovery to be tasted: illicit island-made rum.
But after announcing my plans to go to Cuba, my relatives’ scrumptious tales turned into
warnings. Don’t eat that, stay away from this, eat that and you’ll spend the rest of your trip in the
bathroom. I was to be wary of everything from red meat to water, and for good reason. Several
of the white tourists I spoke to about their trip said they came back lighter than they left because
of wretched food poisoning. I had no business spending that much time in any one restroom in
Havana.
After a tedious check-in process at the airport, I savored my last American meal for ten
days: a sausage, egg, and cheese biscuit. The plane ride took about an hour, but I was already
hungry for my next entrée. Fortunately, I held off from the outdoor food stand at the José Martí
Airport while waiting for my cousins. They promised me they would take me somewhere I liked,
and it turned out to be a café next to one of Havana’s largest theaters.
I still had my nostalgia intact when I sat down for my first meal: a chicken dish with rice
and plantain chips. It was decent, but I became slightly more jealous of my cousin’s milkshake in
the heavy, humid air. I was told to stay away from milk at all cost since most of the stuff on the
island comes in a powder form that can make the uninitiated sick. When curiosity got the better
of me later in my trip, I broke down and bought a milkshake. It tasted radically different than the
shakes I was used to at American burger joints.
I kept finding restaurants with gaps in their menu, out of supplies or short on them, like a
pizza that was topped with only a ghostly layer of sauce and cheese. Some restaurants outright
swindled tourists and told them only the most expensive dishes were available. Others had
19

adapted by giving “whatever’s out back” an umbrella name to be ordered. I searched in vain for a
plate of yuca con mojo. The standard of almost every Cuban restaurant in Miami (next to
buttered Cuban bread) was nearly impossible to find in Havana.
Other things I thought were the same Stateside turned out to be drastically different after
over half a century of the Embargo Yanqui. The Cuban bread my padres raised my sister and me
on was nowhere to be found. Instead, there were these hamburger-sized tasteless buns I had to
make peace with. That was their Cuban bread, and it was a hell of a lot better than the
government allowance of brick-like bread my island relatives say no one willingly eats unless
they have to.
I couldn’t buy anything in everyday grocery stores most Cubans frequent because I was a
visitor without a ration book for staple ingredients like rice and beans. More upscale food stores
catered to cash-heavy estranjeros and the burgeoning class of independent Cubans like cab
drivers and small restaurant owners. The influx of American tourists have lined their pockets in a
way the government never allowed them before. But supplies were never guaranteed, as I learned
from looking at the various empty shelves in the store. I bought bottled water, and headed to the
back of the store towards the butcher’s corner where glass separated customers from dairy and
meat products. His options were scant, with over half of his counter space unused. Thin slices of
meat sold at exorbitant prices were strategically displayed behind a glass case to look fuller. To
his right were the slim supplies of shredded cheese and bright yellow boxes of butter.
My prima negotiated to get a box of butter for my tasteless bread. I’ll need it, and it’s
good, she promised. We pay and leave the shopping center overridden with malanga vines. The
next morning when I’m setting the table, I finally open the butter. Wouldn’t you know it’s
20

practically the same neon yellow as its outside box? I concluded it was the next evolutionary step
beyond margarine, and a giant leap of faith for my stomach. I said nothing of the incident to my
Cuban family.
Many of the places I ended up dining at were far above the price range of the average
Cuban. The places that almost everyone could afford had a never ending lunch rush line that
would run from noon ‘til night. One early evening, I finally decided to go see the famous trippy
‘60s ice cream parlor my mom and her brothers frequented as kids. Named Coppelia and
sporting a kitschy logo made out of ballerina legs, the throwback dulceria has become an iconic
site for visitors and locals alike. The shop even made its way into the island’s cinema history
with a small appearance in the first Cuban movie nominated for a Oscar, “Fresa y Chocolate.” I
waited my turn in the snaking line through some typical rainy season weather. Since I was alone,
they seated me with a pair of foreign exchange students from one of Havana’s many schools. We
chatted until the waiter came with the bad news, the famous ice cream parlor Coppelia only had
two flavors that day and it just ran out of strawberry. We all settled for mantecado, a sweeter
version of vanilla ice cream that comes in a yellow color.
Down Calle 23, the Italian eatery named after that country’s famous studio Cinecetta
caught my eye within my first few days. Again, I was seated with another women eating alone. I
looked outside after the entire place had been filled with its first round of customers and saw a
line in the sun that extended past the building. In my ignorance, I thought the long line meant it
was a great place to eat. Then it dawned on me that this was a government-run restaurant and
perhaps one of the few places most locals could afford. I ordered my spaghetti and cheese bowl
with a soda for something the equivalent of US 40 cents. The flavorless sauce came straight from
the can and the cheese was so revolting, I almost couldn’t finish it, but I dared not waste
21

anything here. I had no frame of reference for how to describe it, other than the cheese made my
stomach turn the moment it touched my lips and it perhaps gave Velveeta several new layers of
flavor depth.
Back in my great aunt’s house, things were more or less as desperate. Unclaimed
leftovers disappeared in a matter of hours. One night I foolishly came home without a bite to eat.
Barring a precious can of Spam she was saving for later in the month, there was nothing else in
the house other than the forbidden powder milk and chocolate syrup that looked like they had
been there for years. Portions were small, so I drank my limited water supply to make up for it.
“You’re fat, I know you like to eat,” my great-aunt joked as I was eating my last breakfast at her
house.
The Cuban food I grew up savoring and learning how to cook was scarce on the island
itself. I came home hungrier than ever for my mom and abuela’s cooking, full of flavor and
ingredients that only the northern capitalists seemed able to supply. My family took a piece of
old Cuba when they left that would become one of the few relics still standing. Because many
resources had dried up in their country, much of that style of cooking is gone or has been altered
to accommodate the short supplies and long lines. I grew up with the stories of my abu e la’s
struggle to find meat to put on the table or trading her sewing skills with neighbors for enough
eggs for her three kids. Already things were tough by the time they left in 1980. When I arrived
in 2015, that way of life and Cuban cooking in general had shrunk to smaller, blander portions.
After I returned from Havana, I insisted on having Cuban food as much as possible in
Florida. We went almost every other day until I had yuca every which way. This was my slice of
Cuba I would always have.
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5. “Stop Saying You Want To See Cuba Before It Changes”
Perhaps many Cuban-Americans will be able to tell you what they were doing the day
President Barack Obama announced the intention to normalize relations with our embargoed
island neighbor. It was December 2014. I was home when the news broke. Immediately, I began
to call and text relatives. Pacing in my living room, I was overcome by an emotional cocktail of
excitement and sadness. I called my abuela, who told me she heard the news over the radio in
Miami. Already, there were the Cold War stalwarts gathering in Little Havana to protest the
announcement. But in an uncharacteristically quiet voice, she said she was hopeful. The news
meant she would be able to visit her brothers and sisters more.
To be Cuban-American is to be politicized. Many of our families have become collateral
damage (if not casualties) in an ideological stand-off. Now with President Obama's trip to the
island, we're called upon to say what we think about it, while we grit our teeth through clueless
media reports and articles advertising the patria as the next vacation wonderland. But this is
something we've dealt with for half a century. That is the story not being heard right now.
The person asking where to get the best mojito in Havana will not understand this.
There is no one way to feel about the trip; there's no way to tie up the narrative into a
neat, one-sentence blurb. Just as this news may hit closer for some than others, there should be
the range of reflections on our varying experiences. Whether you came in from the first flight at
the dawn of Castro’s government, the boat lifts of the '80s, the Special Period in the early '90s,
showed up last week, or are a generation or two removed, there is no one Cuban-American story.

23

I wouldn’t be surprised if my abuela told me the folks in Little Havana were still
protesting. They see President Obama shaking hands with the brother of el diablo who made
them flee their homes as a betrayal. Likewise, I haven’t seen many outlets invoke Cuba’s human
rights issues when discussing political dissidents. We talk about the momentous photo-op and
ignore the reasons why it took 88 years for a sitting U.S. president to take the flight from Florida
to its largest Caribbean neighbor.
On the flip side, there’s an eternal hope we’ll see our friends and loved ones again,
politics be damned. No amount of moral grandstanding will get us back those years we’ve
missed or those we lost while waiting for the right time to travel. There’s no divorcing the
personal from the politics of the situation for us because our families will always come first to
mind. Can we finally plan on that reunion 50 years in the making?
The person asking me which hotel they should stay at when they visit will not understand
this.
A year after the U.S.-Cuba announcement, I went to the island for the first time. When
the plane touched Cuban soil a mere hour after leaving Tampa, Florida, the cabin was filled with
applause and tears. One woman behind me sobbed, “Ay, I never thought I’d see it again.” The
emotions didn’t let up from there.
I stayed with relatives I had never met before, and we excitedly exchanged information
about what it was like to live on either side. What do you do with limited Internet? What’s it like
to travel so much? What’s it like to deal with ration books? What’s it like to have to pay for
education? I wanted to stay and ask them so many more questions. What was it like when my
24

mom was growing up here? What was it like after she left? There are dozens of relatives I have
yet to meet.
The Cuba I visited is perhaps not what most reporters have been talking about. I doubt
they’re experiencing rolling blackouts (there were two when I visited for 10 days) or lack of hot
water in Havana. They’re not eating the substitute milk, butter, and cheese sold in spartan
grocery stores that offer more booze and cigarettes than cookies. They’re probably finding
Cubans excited to talk to Americans, not the ones who still live in fear of the government and
who scolded me in a store for talking about the high price of meat. I doubt they’ve mistaken a
restaurant’s long line to enter as a sign the place was good when instead it was a government-run
spot affordable for most Cubans. If the press is getting access to Internet from their hotel rooms,
then they’re missing the throngs of young Cubans spread alongside Calle 23 trying desperately to
cling onto sporadic Wi-Fi at exorbitant prices.
The person asking me where to buy cigars on the island will not understand this.
You want to see Cuba before it changes. I want to go back to see my family before they
pass or are imprisoned again.
The person flipping through their vacation album of dilapidated American muscle cars
will not understand this.

25

6. Part 2 Introduction
The second portion of this thesis is an application of the personal perspective to opinion pieces
about topics other than Cuba. Taking on the issues of online harassment and Hollywood
discrimination, the author relates the lessons learned from writing her essays from Cuba to a
different kind of writing as a columnist. The essays are perhaps not as focused on the first person
experience but also weave in the lived experience and frustrations of others. Both topics affect
the author as a Latina film critic covering Hollywood and as a woman writing on the Internet.
These are not solution pieces, but a call to action and awareness about potential threats facing
women like her.

26

7. On Online Harassment
Not all harassment online is created equally. For women of color, trolls and haters can
use sexualized threats and racial slurs beyond the typical round of name calling. Public personas
like artists and writers are reminded of how important it is to be on social media to advertise their
work. Yet those social media gurus and career counselors are not talking about the double-edged
sword facing women of color every day they sign on.
My friends and I had long talked about the extra double standard facing women of color
who tweet about race and immigration. I took this harassment theory for a test spin on a dating
app, prime real estate for all the comments your heart never desired. When I first signed up, I
thought nothing of checking myself off as Latina – as I have done so my whole life. Then the
comments started. Did I have a sexy accent? Was I born here or was I on the app to find a green
card husband? Those were the kinder ones.
After commiserating with a friend about my terrible experience, she suggested I uncheck
my race/ethnicity option to see if the creepy messages stopped. They didn’t entirely, but the
amount of racialized language dramatically diminished. Conversations started happening more
often than blocks. I had mixed feelings about hiding behind my phenotypical looks, but for my
friends and others, this half-hearted solution isn’t always possible.
Writer Christopher Carbone had a similar experience when he used activist Feminista
Jones’ photo (with her permission) for a week on his online profile as an experiment to
understand the slew of abuse she had written about. Within days, he reported an increase of
harassment, using the block button and being mansplained (men taking it upon themselves to
explain the obvious to women) to, including from a fellow journalist. Carbone was so frustrated
27

from the ordeal; he lashed out at a few trolls. “I was simultaneously horrified and not surprised,”
he wrote about the stream of abuse he received in a short week (Carbone 2014).
But what happens when you can’t change your avatar or author photo? L.A. -based
professional violinist Mia Matsumiya received fetishistic messages and lewd comments from
strangers for years. Deciding she suffered enough in silence, Matsumiya began posting her
harassers’ notes publically. The performer has pushed the conversation outside her circle of
friends to mainstream outlets like the Washington Post in a move to reclaim her piece of public
space under siege from racist misogyny (Wang 2015).
Her saga also confirms the kind of horror stories women writers of color pass around
when we’re offline. Some still feel unsafe to bring it up in public. At this year’s Online News
Association convention, the online harassment of women was one of the defining keynote talks
(Jeong 2015). Digital journalists and writers shared their stories at the packed hall, but it was
columnist Dr. Michelle Ferrier’s testimony that left the loudest of stunned silences in the room.
Once a prominent writer for a local paper in Florida, Dr. Ferrier said the harassment she
received escalated from emails to mailed envelops full of threats against her family. She tried to
avoid writing about her family and raising a multicultural household, but that did nothing to
stave off the harassers. Eventually, she fled her job and moved her family out of town in the dead
of night for their safety.
Dr. Ferrier’s story brought back my memories of harassment. Although they were
nowhere as severe, one situation escalated to the point where I scrambled for help on filing a
restraining order against someone I knew. Our professional relationship had soured, and his
response was to send me cruel messages against my writing, my boyfriend, and my life. At the
28

time, I was working as a social media manager and did not have the option to “log off” or avoid
those websites. My career and income hung in the balance as I swallowed down panic attacks
and ignored death threats from someone I still worked with. I ended up dropping the restraining
order paperwork, afraid it was too little evidence for the police to take seriously. One of his last
messages to me was that he wished I would “die in a fire.”
A Pew Research Study (Duggan 2014) found that while men were more likely to
experience name calling, women 18-29 were much more vulnerable to online sexual harassment,
stalking and physical threats. Unfortunately, the Pew Study did not look at the breakdown of
online experiences by race, only gender (and excluded the experiences of trans and gender non-
conforming users). This study doesn’t take into account that some platforms like Twitter are
heavily trafficked by black and Latino users who may be disproportionally affected by
harassment (Duggan 2015).
Another recent study from Women, Action, and the Media revealed that 27 percent of
reported incidents to Twitter were over hate speech and that 67 percent of users reporting an
incident had complained to Twitter about a previous harassment issue (Matias 2015). It’s a
sustained, systemic issue, and one that needs more than just the attention of women of color. It’s
a problem that needs more action to help keep users like Matsumiya and Ferrier safe to guarantee
equal access across boundaries of race, gender and sexuality.
It’s also an issue facing young women of color like myself on a daily basis. As terrifying
as it is to put your work out there to be judged or commented upon when you’re starting out,
imagine quelling fears of death threats or harm to your family. Online harassment then becomes
29

another tool to silence women of color and uphold the status quo. It’s a weapon that needs
disarming if we want to see ourselves and our media landscape grow diverse voices.

30

8. On #OscarsSoWhite
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Well, if something ain’t work for over 100 years, do we
chuck it out altogether? What if it works for some people, but not everyone? Can’t we spruce it
up a bit to make it work for all?
#OscarsSoWhite has been an exercise in how activist efforts can bring about change.
What grew out of disappointment over an all-white roster of acting nominees last year, has led to
the promise of reform in the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences membership ranks
and cover story after cover story examining how far the entertainment industry goes in keeping
women and people of color out from behind the camera or in front of it.
And yet there’s still panic in the establishment or clueless dismissals from folks who
don’t get it. Where it once looked inappropriate for someone to ask “why isn’t there diversity
here?”, the sudden interest has revealed celebrities like the Coen brothers (Yamato 2016) and
Julie Delpy (Waxman 2016) don’t grasp the purpose of #OscarsSoWhite. They don’t see the
racialized exclusion because white executives and filmmakers haven’t had to deal with it.
Last year, I was infuriated by the unfunny comedy Hot Pursuit, a movie which mined
Sofia Vergara’s Charo-like hypersexual persona and Latino drug lord stereotypes for cheap
laughs. But what hurt worse than Vergara quipping about her thick accent was that in looking
through the rest of 2015 releases, there would be no other Latinas in a leading role for the rest of
the year. The movie came out in May. Could you imagine what studio movies would look like if
that happened to white men?
University of Southern California Professor Stacy Smith made headlines for finding just
how little racial and ethnic minorities are shown in movies. Less than 30 percent of speaking
31

roles went to actors of color in film, TV and digital episodes. Of the 407 directors evaluated in
the study, 53 were from underrepresented communities and only two were black women. A little
over 12 percent of last year’s 109 film releases were directed by people of color (Smith 2016).
To say the numbers are dismal is a nicety. They are pathetic.
In researching my piece on diversity at Sundance, I found that the Sundance Institute has
trained over 300 indigenous filmmakers from around the world since the ‘80s (Castillo 2016).
Would you like to find out if any Hollywood executives can name any of them? I do. While
films like the Korean-American led Spa Nights and the largely Latino cast of White Girl duked it
out for festival awards, only Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation manage to secure a record
distribution deal to the tune of $17.5 million (Siegel 2016). But it’s not enough. It’s one battle
victory in a war to break the status quo.
The problem is multi-faceted and will not be solved with one film or one imaginary
studio as one producer purports (Howard 2016). No one entity should have to shoulder the
burden of a “separate but equal” Hollywood. Every corner of the industry, including agents,
reporters, publicists, producers, trade unions and beyond, must do a top-to-bottom soul search for
how they will effectively address the problem beyond platitudes. The solution to
#OscarsSoWhite is astoundingly simple: change those numbers and hire us.
This issue is beyond a trending topic. After the buzzword dies, I may still go to the
movies and hardly ever see myself reflected on the silver screen. We’ve had dreary diverse
representation since the dawn of the industry. That’s why after decades of little-to-no presence,
people are speaking out, and there’s a good chance we won’t stop until we see the kind of
progress TV has undergone over the past few years. Some of us are already working in the film
32

industry but all of us are their audiences. Hollywood deserves to be called out for keeping us off
screens for so long. It needs to get over its bigotry before it’s too late and finally loses the battle
to television.
The crowd who whooped and hollered at Vergara’s broken speech in “Hot Pursuit”
would not see another Latina actress stand apart from her stereotyped performance for the rest of
the year. Their impression of Latinas is colored by Hollywood’s bigotry. Considering these
constrained roles also affects black, Asian and Native American actors means that Hollywood is
limiting our potential in the eyes of our own culture. And in a country that is rapidly browning,
#OscarsSoWhite is not just a trendy hashtag but spotlights the potential harm of our continuing
exclusion from Hollywood.

33

References
Carbone, Christopher. 2014. “What I Learned From Tweeting With A Black Woman’s Avatar
For #RaceSwapExp.” Thought Catalog. Accessed March 10, 2016.
http://thoughtcatalog.com/christopher-carbone/2014/04/what-i-learned-from-tweeting-with-a-
black-womans-avatar-for-raceswapexp/.
Castillo, Monica. 2015. “Going Home For The First Time: Returning To Cuba.”
RogerEbert.com. Accessed March 10, 2016. http://www.rogerebert.com/festivals-and-
awards/going-home-for-the-first-time-a-return-to-cuba.
Castillo, Monica. 2016. “In Conversation About Diversity In Hollywood, Where Does Sundance
Fit In?” NPR. Accessed March 10, 2016.
http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2016/02/03/465322193/in-the-conversation-about-
diversity-in-hollywood-where-does-sundance-fit-in.
Castillo, Monica. 2016. “The Movie Memories My Mother Taught Me : Retracing My First
Steps To The Cinema.” Ampersandla.com. Accessed March 10, 2016.
http://www.ampersandla.com/the-movie-memories-my-mother-taught-me-retracing-my-first-
steps-to-the-cinema/.
Duggan, Meave, Nicole B. Ellison, Cliff Lampe, Amanda Lenhart, and Mary Madden. 2015.
“Demographics of Key Social Networking Platforms.” Pew Research Center. Accessed March
10, 2016. http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/01/09/demographics-of-key-social-networking-
platforms-2/.
Duggan, Meave, 2014. “Online Harassment.” Pew Research Center. Accessed March 10, 2016.
http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/10/22/online-harassment/.
Howard, Adam. 2016. “Producer: Black-run Hollywood studio would solve #OscarsSoWhite.”
MSNBC. Accessed March 10, 2016. http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/producer-black-run-
hollywood-studio-would-solve-oscarssowhite.
Jeong, Sarah, Soraya Chemaly, Dr. Michelle Ferrier, Amanda Hess and Laurie Penny. 2015.
“We Belong Here: Pushing Back Against Online Harassment.” Online News Association
Conference, Los Angeles, CA. Accessed March 10, 2016.
http://ona15.journalists.org/sessions/antiharassmentkeynote/#.VuI2V_krLIV.
Matias, J. N., Johnson, A., Boesel, W. E., Keegan, B., Friedman, J., &DeTar, C. 2015.
“Reporting, Reviewing, and Responding to Harassment on Twitter. Women, Action, and the
Media.” Accessed March 10, 2016. http://womenactionmedia.org/twitter-report.
Siegel, Tatiana and Rebecca Ford. 2016. “Sundance: 'Birth of a Nation' Sets Record With
$17.5M Sale to Fox Searchlight.” The Hollywood Reporter. Accessed March 10, 2016.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/sundance-birth-a-nation-sets-857365.
Smith, Dr. Stacy, Marc Choueiti, and Katherine Pieper. 2016. “Inclusion or Invisibility:
Comprehensive Annenberg Report on Diversity in Entertainment.” University of Southern
34

California. Accessed March 10, 2016.
http://annenberg.usc.edu/pages/~/media/MDSCI/CARDReport%20FINAL%2022216.ashx.
Wang, Yanan. 2015. “A female violinist exposes 10 years of lewd, fetishizing messages from
men online.” The Washington Post. Accessed March 10, 2016.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/10/21/a-woman-violinist-
exposes-10-years-of-lewd-fetishizing-messages-from-men-online/.
Waxman, Sharon. 2016. “Julie Delpy Says Hollywood Dumps on Women Most: ‘I Sometimes
Wish I Were African American’ (Video).” The Wrap. Accessed March 10, 2016.
http://www.thewrap.com/julie-delpy-hollywood-dumps-women-sometimes-wish-african-
american/.
Yamato, Jen. 2016. “The Coen Brothers: ‘The Oscars Are Not That Important.’” The Daily
Beast. Accessed March 10, 2016. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/04/the-coen-
brothers-the-oscars-are-not-that-important.html.

Abstract (if available)

Abstract Discussions about identity politics are more prevalent than perhaps ever before thanks to the democratization of online publishing platforms. Many writers are attempting to better share their truths on personal topics, including this Cuban-American film critic. The thesis is a reflective exploration of a writer’s first trip to her parents’ home country at a pivotal time of change in Cuba’s history. The paper’s style is from a more personal point of view that then extends into column-style opinion writing. Topics such as representation and Hollywood and gender equality online will be discussed by an author retracing her roots and building her future.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Castillo, Monica Marie (author)

Core Title Finding a voice: essays and columns from the Cuban American experience

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Specialized Journalism (The Arts)

Publication Date 07/21/2016

Defense Date 07/20/2016

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Cuba,Cuban American,diversity in Hollywood,essays,film diversity,OAI-PMH Harvest,online harassment

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Anawalt, Sasha (committee chair), Bustamante , Peggy (committee member), Turan, Kenneth (committee member)

Creator Email mcasti8485@gmail.com,monicamc@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c40-271633

Unique identifier UC11281533

Identifier etd-CastilloMo-4565.pdf (filename),usctheses-c40-271633 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-CastilloMo-4565.pdf

Dmrecord 271633

Document Type Thesis

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Castillo, Monica Marie

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA