Recovering Memory / Discovering the Future: Perspective in Uva de Aragón's The Memory of Silence

• In Event: Gendering Cuba: How Women's Voices Change the Global Understanding of the Nation

Abstract

Uva de Aragón’s The Memory of Silence (Memoria del silencio, 2002) explores the divergences and commonalities in the lives of twin sisters separated at the outset of the Cuban Revolution, and as such complicates and enriches our understanding of contemporary Cuba. The text presents the characters’ individual stories through their own subjective diaries, which in turn are contextualized by the inclusion of objective newspapers, speeches, and other true-to-life works. The result is that each alternating chapter triggers a pendulum of viewpoint, serving as a collage of the socio-political reality that has molded two sisters and one culture. In this way De Aragón achieves a truly neo-historical novel that offers an insightful chronicle of the decades since the Revolution, a primer in popular culture from the 1960s to the present. As the reader re-lives these particular momentous events, one comes to the realization that the true value of the work lies in its balance of perspective. It would be inaccurate to say that the novel offers an objective view of modern-day Cubans (both those in exile and on the island). Instead, it offers two intentionally subjective views that culminate in a synthesis of understanding: namely, that geo-cultural bonds are greater than geo-political differences. In the end, The Memory of Silence is a book of hope, but a hope that can only be realized once memory has been un-silenced.

Author

• Jeffrey C Barnett, Washington and Lee University