The Intricacies of Cubanness :: Personal Narrative Writing

The Intricacies of Cubanness Hey bro, en Hialeah me quedo, I verbalize to my friends Eddie Safille, Alex G Gonzalez and Orlie Castelblanco as we finished up our Cuban coffee plot of land playing a game of dominos. Eddie, in an enthusiastic voice, answers, You better imagine Im staying in Hialeah. This place is our home. We all love Hialeah, as city in Miami-Dade County located a few miles from Miami city limits and is preponderantly Cuban. Hialeah is one of the only cities in this country where we dont look uniform a minority. We cling to our Cuban culture like a python clings to its prey while it squeezes the life form its lungs with its muscular body. I savor a vigorous bond with my Cuban heritage, every time I play my bongos, every time the Salsa beat moves my feet across the floor like a hurricane taking a town by storm, or every time I drink some caf while playing dominos in the park or behind La Carreta restaurant. One of my preferred memories is of my frie nds and I playing a game of dominos at Bayfront car park downtown with Latin music in the background, feeling the ocean snap bean brush against our faces, and seeing all the skyscrapers tower over us in a seemingly endless bundle of beauty and majesty. The city, with its sun-splashed avenues has treated the Cuban people with love and respect and has contributed to my pride in where Im from. I like to think of my cultural heritage as a chocolate chip cookie. The dough of the cookie is an Americanized version of both Cuban and Lebanese cultures making up the majority of the cookie, while the chips be a mix of many cultures that have influenced me in smaller ways, such as my fathers Irish roots. The reason the Cuban and Lebanese cultures because the around predominate is to the highest degreely as a result of how I grew up. all in all my life I have lived with my parents, and my mothers parents. Although both my Cuban and Lebanese influences have greatly impacted my l ife, my Cuban-American culture is without doubt the most influential of all. The first language I spoke was Spanish. Most of my friends are also of Cuban decent, and the city that I grew up in, Miami, is a strong hold of Cuban power in the United States.