Milcha Sanchez-Scott’s The Cuban swimmer; a one-act family drama is a cinematic play that fascinatingly portrays the immigrants’ struggle to accomplish their American dreams through their daughter, despite the odds she has to undergo.
The play that miraculously ends with more spiritual success is set around Cuban-American family daughter, 19-year-old Margarita Suarez participating in a swimming competition that she must win in order to realize the family dream of success in America (Sanchez-Scott 213). The play kicks off (strategically in one scene), with Margarita swimming, and the family members follow her on a “ragtag” boat, in an effort to give her moral support by cheering her up (Frederick 3). The play continues with some events seemingly meant to draw our attention away from the focus, Margarita.
However, all the activities revolve around her overcoming numerous drawbacks, sometimes in a magical way, thereby bringing some life into the feelings of the audience. Such physical and psychological challenges Margarita’s faces are like a struggle to wade through an oil slick, hallucination troubles, and the struggle to maintain the pride and dream of the father, who happens to double as her coach and mentor (Wade, p. 12). It becomes clear that Margarita is not only competing for her own success but for the entire family’s pride and welfare, and of course the skeptical media and viewers whom she has to prove wrong by winning.
There is a powerful cultural perception of the behaviors of the three groups, the father and the brother on one side, the mother and the grandmother on the other side, and the American media and viewers portray; the position of the women in the Cuban-American community.
Margarita’s other family member; brother is jealousy of the attention the sister is getting and cracks jokes to hide this feeling, the mother generally fears for the daughter’s life, the grandmother is yelling with fear at the news helicopters, while the father-coach is more concerned with her daughter winning no matter what risks she faces (Wade, p. 14). Margarita struggles to win the competition but is realistically overwhelmed by too much expectation from the three groups.
These groups unaware of the kind of distraction they are causing to the teenage Cuban swimmer are constantly in pursuit of her as she swims, in the name of giving her moral support. In the process, the swimming Margarita starts to feel disgusted and detracted as she hears things like “I’m so cold, I [cannot] move….I put my face in water….and I hear them laughing at me…..” (Sanchez-Scott, 1504). The audience starts to feel she is being defeated when she starts to complain of the fish that bites and mocks her, vividly describing the particular fish in a manner that “sinks” the hearts of the audience.
At this point, everybody believes she cannot make it and she is the only one left with keeping her own hope of winning, with just one particular motivator being the fear of losing and its accompanying consequences. This story is a clear manifestation of how immigrant women ascend to the throne through adverse cultural challenges. As the experts of the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) describes them, “they are the queens of homes, who make life more comfortable for the rest of the family at the cost of their own social potential, their health and life” despite all the limitations (Pages, p. 17).
All over the play, it is easy to note the special relationship between Margarita’s father Eduardo, and Margarita herself. He is the father, the coach, and the mentor to his daughter. He pushes Margarita all through the play to give the race her best and never attempt to pull out of the competition. The complexity here is that Eduardo, as a father wants the success out of her daughter despite all the risks associated with the adventure. Ironically, the father-coach is not even a swimmer himself, a very ridiculous aspect of the play (Frederick, p. 32).
When Margarita disappears away from the vicinity of everyone deep into the ocean, there is every reason to believe that she had drowned. By doing this, she moves away from the distractions, that is, she separates herself from all the external influences and concentrates her energy to overcome one obstacle: internal drawbacks, i.e. the feeling of defeat. She surprises the entire observers when, as if a miracle was just happening, she emerges from the water after these people mistook her for a seal. Her mother Aida had previously asked, “Is that my child, or a seal?” and the grandmother claiming to have seen Margarita, the obviously jealousy brother Simon insisted that was just a seal (Sanchez-Scott, 1519).
It is undeniable how mass media has played an adverse role in shaping and reflecting public opinions in the past and present, providing the connections between individuals and society as a whole (McCombs & Shaw, p. 176). Some scholars critique that media has a capacity to weaken the ability of individuals to act independently, sometimes painting the image of an individual differently. Social scientists have concurred that mass media is an instrument of social control, and it is apparent that the newscasters who are flying over Margarita as she swims are eager to get any form of information that would make “great news”, and sometimes, unfortunate news like margarita’s death or failure would make great news.
Being an immigrant family daughter, who is trying to justify the family worth of coming to America and most importantly proving her ability as a woman to the pessimistic media who would traditionally connect her failure to her gender and race, Margarita does not give in to stereotypical or judgmental media’s point of view. Margarita discovers her real self after saving her life, and ultimately winning the race, attracting herself accolades, and most importantly proving the pessimistic media and the rest of the world wrong, and saving the pride of the father and family.
The Cuban swimmer illustrates how people all over the world move to America in search of American dream, a better life, which sometimes proves very challenging especially for women. Such dreams are like wealth and career success or as one may describe it, just pure happiness (Tattlin, p. 320). Traditionally, women have to prove themselves worthy of their course than men, with numerous and sometimes unrealistic expectation just to keep the family unit together.
However, as seen with this Cuban family, the father, the mother and the grand mother have little opportunity left to achieve any meaningful success, and instead wants to achieve the so called success through their daughter, Margarita, just to prove the worth of being in America. It wouldn’t be wrong to conclude that the cultural adversity that are against the young swimmer represent the kind of difficulties that women face in order to be as successful as men, that is, they have to be twice as good as men in order to reach the same level with men (Tattlin, p. 316).
Work cited
Sanchez-Scott, Milcha. 1998. Dog Lady and The Cuban Swimmer, New York, Dramatist’s Play Service
Frederick, William F. “The Cuban”. Anti Essays, 2007.
McCombs, M & Shaw, D.L. 1972, ‘The Agenda-setting Function of the Mass Media’, Public Opinion Quarterly, 73, pp. 176–187
Pages Raisa. 2001. Women in Cuba – an overview: From economically dependent to independent
Tattlin, Isadora, 2002. “An American Housewife in Havana: A tale of Hardship and Beauty”, Cuban Diary, Algonquin press, p. 314-320
Wade, Bradford. “The Cuban Swimmer” – One Act Drama by Milcha Sanchez-Scott. About.com