Cristina García

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Cristina García (b. July 4, 1958) is a Cuban-born American journalist and novelist. After working for Time Magazine as a researcher, reporter, and Miami bureau chief, she turned to writing fiction. Her first novel, Dreaming in Cuban (1992), received critical acclaim and was a finalist for the National Book Award. She has since published her novels The Agüero Sisters (1997) and Monkey Hunting (2003), and has edited books of Cuban and other Latin American literature. Her fourth novel, A Handbook to Luck, is expected in 2007.

Contents 1 Early life and education 2 Career in journalism 3 Novelist 4 Current life 5 Bibliography 6 Awards and Honors 7 References

[edit] Early life and education

García was born in Havana. In 1961, when she was two years old, her family was among the first wave of people to flee Cuba after Fidel Castro came to power. They settled in New York City where she was raised in Queens, Brooklyn Heights, and Manhattan, in predominantly Irish, Italian, and Jewish nighborhoods. Her family, however, communicated at home in Spanish and shared many stories about Cuba during her youth, and she says that she has always thought of herself as Cuban.

In 1979 she completed a Batchelor's degree in Political Science at Barnard College, where she says a course in English stirred her interest in literature. She earned a Master's degree in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in 1981. During her graduate studies she spent a year in Italy and later returned to Europe to accept a marketing position with Proctor and Gamble in West Germany, but left that job after three months.

[edit] Career in journalism

After returning to the United States, García pursued a career in journalism. Having worked as a part-time "copy girl" with the New York Times while at Johns Hopkins, she obtained an intern position with The Boston Globe that she held for a short time before becoming a reporter for the Knoxville Journal.

In 1983 she was hired by Time Magazine. Beginning there as a reporter/researcher, she became the publication's San Francisco correspondent in 1985, and its bureau chief in Miami for Florida and the Caribbean region in 1987. In 1988 she was transferred to Los Angeles. She terminated her employment with Time to write fiction full-time in 1990.

[edit] Novelist

García's first novel, Dreaming in Cuban, was published in 1992. She has said that it contained ideas that had been percolating inside her throughout the 1980s, especially after her visit to Cuba in 1984. The book received very favorable critical attention and was nominated for the National Book Award. García gave birth to her daughter Pilar six months after it's release, and says that her preoccupation with her pregnancy and giving birth had kept her from realizing the impact the book had had until she was doing book tours in 1997.

She struggled to write a strong second novel for two years before abandonning that work to start on The Agüero Sisters. which was released in 1997 and awarded the Janet Heidiger Kafka Prize. She says the inspiration for it was a visit many years earlier by a Cuban aunt to her mother in Miami that ended abruptly and left long-standing negative feelings.

While she is often portrayed as an important Cuban-American voice in American literature, she reports experiencing some unease in relating to other Cubans — both with those still in Cuba and those in exile in Florida. Some question why she writes in English. Others take issue with her lack of engagement in anti-Castro causes. She has said she attempts to emphasize in her novels the fact that "there is no one Cuban exile."

[edit] Current life

García now lives with her daughter Pilar in California.

[edit] Bibliography

• Dreaming in Cuban: A novel (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992)
• Cars of Cuba, essay, with photographer Joshua Greene and creator D. D. Allen (New York: H.N. Abrams, 1995. ISBN 0810926318)
• The Agüero Sisters (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997. ISBN 0679450904)
• Monkey Hunting (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003. ISBN 0375410562)
• Cubanisimo!: The Vintage Book of contemporary Cuban literature, editor and introduction (New York: Vintage Books, 2003. ISBN 0385721374)
• Bordering Fires: The vintage book of contemporary Mexican and Chicano/a literature, editor and introduction (New York: Vintage Books, 2006. ISBN 1400077184)
• A Handbook to Luck (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007. ISBN 030726436X)

[edit] Awards and Honors

• Dreaming in Cuban a finalist for the 1992 National Book Award
• 1996 Whiting Writers' Award for fiction
• 1997 Janet Heidiger Kafka Prize for The Agüero Sisters

[edit] References

• "About the Author" and "A Conversation with Cristina García" in The Agüero Sisters. Random House Publishing Group, 1998. ISBN 0-345-40651-6.
• Caminero-Santangelo, Marta, University of Kansas. "Cristina Garcia". The Literary Encyclopedia. 17 May 2005. The Literary Dictionary Company. (retrieved 14 March 2007)
• Johnson, Kelli Lyon. "Cristina Garcia - b. 1958". VG: Voices from the Gaps. May 9, 2005. (retrieved March 13, 2007)