Ana Menendez's story "In Cuba I was a German Shepherd" introduces Maximo, an exile from Cuba, who plays games with his friends in the domino park of Little Havana: a "fenced rectangle of space that people missed on the way to their office jobs" (44). The four men exchange jokes and stories while playing the familiar game each day beneath a banyan tree. While their games seem to be a simple pass time spent between friends, Maximo harbors deep feelings of resentment that he is no longer able to deny once the story reaches its end.
As the men play dominoes, Maximo amuses them with jokes that poke fun at American superiority and his feelings towards his displacement from Cuba. Early on in the story, Maximo's true feelings towards his life in America are suppressed - he jests about the situation, eliciting laughter from his friends Carlos, Antonio, and Raul, a fellow Cuban. Eventually, however, Maximo's memories from his life in Cuba are brought to light, and the story loses its light-hearted tone. In Cuba, Maximo was "a professor at the University", but in Miami, where Maximo moved with his wife and children, "his Spanish and his University of Havana credentials meant nothing" (45). Unable to procure a job as stately as the former, he and his wife opened a restaurant, dreaming of their life in Cuba. At the story's present, Maximo has sold the restaurant and Rosa has passed, but even "five years after selling the place, Maximo couldn't walk by it... he'd stood and stared into the restaurant and had become lost and dizzy" (46). By now, Maximo's jokes about the Americans and Cubans has taken on a darker undertone. Even Carlos and Antonio, who were Dominican, could not "understand all the layers of hurt in the Cubans' jokes" (47). |
Maximo's revelation occurs when a tour group visits the domino park. As he listens to the tour guide's demeaning description of the men and Cuban culture, he feels "like an animal... [wanting] to growl and cast about behind the metal fence" (53). Unable to contain his anger, Maxiumo "made a lunge at the fence... he could no longer sit where he was, accept things as they were" (53). Maximo finally stops denying that his life in America has sufficed, and is fed up with being treated like a spectacle by Americans.
Maximo's final joke gives Menendez's story its title - he tells of a dog from Cuba that arrives in America and notices an "elegant white poodle striding toward him" (54). The dog, Juanito, professes his love for the poodle, who quickly rejects him, calling him a "short, insignificant mutt" (54). Juanito replies, "here in America, I may be a short, insignificant mutt, but in Cuba I was a German shepherd" (54). As Maximo finishes his joke, he is overcome with emotion. The correlation between Juanito and Maximo is clear - in Cuba Maximo mattered, but since coming to America, he feels like insignificant. |