Migration and Displacement in Of Women and Salt: Cuban Exiles and Central American Migrants
The Unequal Architecture of Displacement
Gabriela Garcia's Of Women and Salt builds its central thematic argument on a stark contrast: the experiences of Cuban exiles and Central American migrants are not parallel journeys but are shaped by radically different legal, racial, and historical conditions. The novel's claim is that U.S. immigration systems do not treat all displaced people equally—they create a hierarchy of belonging that determines who is welcomed, who is detained, and who is expelled. By weaving together the stories of a nineteenth-century Cuban cigar roller, a Cuban-American woman in Miami, and a Salvadoran mother and daughter, Garcia shows that displacement is never a single experience. It is always filtered through nationality, race, and the political moment, and these filters have life-or-death consequences for families.
Cuban Exiles and the Privilege of the "Wet Foot, Dry Foot" Era
The novel establishes this hierarchy early through Jeanette's perspective. In chapter 2, when Jeanette takes in Ana, the daughter of her detained neighbor, she confronts her own mother's indifference. Jeanette's mother, a Cuban exile, dismisses the situation with a reminder that the "wet foot, dry foot" policy—which granted Cuban migrants legal status upon reaching U.S. soil—is about to end. Jeanette pushes back, asking whether Cubans get "special treatment" and whether it is her responsibility to care about other immigrants. The exchange reveals a generational and ideological divide: Jeanette's mother sees her own exile as a triumph of freedom, while Jeanette recognizes the injustice of a system that grants Cubans automatic status while Central Americans face detention and deportation.
This contrast deepens in chapter 9, when Jeanette travels to Cuba to meet her grandmother Dolores. There, she reflects on the racial and class dimensions of Cuban exile. She notes that in Miami, "Cuban is synonymous with white," and that Black Cubans fare no better in the United States than they do on the island. Her own family history is marked by this tension—her mother's refusal to acknowledge her curly hair or her features, the way Cuban identity is policed to exclude Blackness. Jeanette's trip to Cuba is not a homecoming but a confrontation with the fact that she belongs to a diaspora that has been granted a kind of conditional whiteness, a privilege that separates her from the Central American migrants she sees in Miami. The novel uses Jeanette's discomfort to expose the internal hierarchies within the Cuban exile community, showing that even those who benefit from unequal treatment are not immune to its contradictions.
Gloria and Ana: The Machinery of Detention and Deportation
In stark opposition to the Cuban exile experience, the novel traces the fate of Gloria and her daughter Ana. Gloria is detained at the Texas Regional Residential Center, a family detention facility, where she is the only woman without her child. The outline tells us that Gloria learns Ana was left alone after her apprehension, turned over to authorities, and is being sent to the same facility; both will be deported to El Salvador. The novel's depiction of this process is deliberately bureaucratic and dehumanizing. Gloria is pressured to sign a Voluntary Departure form, a document that waives her right to a hearing. She watches telenovelas and immigration news in the common room, surrounded by other Salvadoran women who discuss credible fear interviews and asylum. The detention center is not a place of refuge but a holding pen where families are processed for expulsion.
Gloria's narrative in chapter 5, told in second person to her daughter, reveals the emotional toll of this machinery. She describes how Ana's childhood is shaped by captivity—the industrial playground, the classes with younger children, the loss of her mother's cooking. Gloria's fear is not just that she will be deported, but that captivity will "shape you into something new and unrecognizable." The novel shows that displacement is not only physical; it is a process of erasure. When Gloria and Ana are eventually dropped off in Mexico with the words "Find your way home," the state has effectively abandoned them, treating them as disposable.
Ana's own journey, narrated in chapter 12, completes this arc. At thirteen, she crosses the Rio Grande with a group of migrants guided by a pollero, using tires as flotation devices. The crossing is terrifying and chaotic—a little girl nearly drowns, and Ana must decide whether to help or save herself. She remembers her earlier entry into the United States, hidden in a car trunk, and the years of relative stability in Miami that followed. But that stability was always tenuous. When her mother was detained, Ana was taken in by Jeanette for a few days, then picked up by police and deported. The novel shows that Ana's displacement is cyclical: she is expelled, then returns, only to face the same system that expelled her. Her journey back to Miami is not a homecoming but a return to a place that has already rejected her.
Historical Displacement and the Legacy of Resistance
The novel's third strand, set in 1866 Cuba, grounds these contemporary experiences in a longer history of displacement. María Isabel, a cigar roller in Camagüey, lives through a rebellion against Spanish rule. The outline describes how she discovers a field of slaughtered soldiers, her mother dies, and the workshop shrinks as workers flee to Florida. María Isabel's displacement is not a border crossing but a loss of home and community. She and Antonio hold secret reading sessions in a sugarcane field, and when Antonio is executed, she gives birth to their daughter Cecilia. The novel links this historical displacement to the present through objects: the books that Antonio read, including Les Misérables and Cecilia Valdés, survive across generations.
In chapter 9, Jeanette discovers these same books in her grandmother's house in Cuba. She finds a Spanish translation of Les Misérables with an inscription in the margin: "We are force." This mantra, which appears throughout the novel, becomes a symbol of resilience and resistance. But it is also ambiguous. Jeanette reads it as a command—"I am forced to love you"—and as a burden. The mantra connects María Isabel's defiance of colonial censorship to Gloria's survival in detention and Ana's determination to cross the river. Yet the novel refuses to romanticize this force. It is not a triumphant slogan but a desperate assertion of existence in the face of erasure.
The books themselves are symbols of displacement and continuity. They travel from 1866 Cuba to present-day Miami, passed from María Isabel to her descendants, and eventually to Ana, who receives a Spanish edition of Les Misérables on her fifteenth birthday from Carmen, Jeanette's neighbor. The inscription "We are more than we think we are" (a variation of the mantra) suggests that displaced people carry within them histories that exceed the categories imposed on them. But the novel also shows that these objects can be lost, stolen, or misinterpreted. Jeanette's grandmother accuses her of stealing the book, and Jeanette's own life ends in overdose, leaving the book to be passed on by a stranger. The legacy of displacement is not a clean inheritance but a tangled web of care and neglect.
Complexity and Contradiction
The novel resists any simple moral about migration. Jeanette, who benefits from Cuban exile privilege, is also a recovering addict who dies of an overdose. Her privilege does not protect her from self-destruction. The novel shows that the same system that grants Cubans status also produces other forms of precarity—addiction, poverty, family estrangement. Jeanette's mother, who lectures her about Cuba's hardships, is also a woman who abandoned her own mother for political reasons. The novel complicates the idea of a unified Cuban exile experience by exposing internal divisions of race, class, and politics.
Similarly, the mantra "We are force" is not a simple affirmation. It can be read as a claim of agency, but also as a description of being forced—forced to leave, forced to survive, forced to love. The novel's non-chronological structure, which jumps between 1866, 2006, 2014, 2015, and 2019, mirrors the fragmented experience of displacement. Memory is unreliable, and the past is always present. Ana's memories of her childhood in Miami are mixed with her mother's stories, so she cannot tell what actually happened from what she was told. This blurring of memory and narrative is itself a form of displacement—the self is never fully at home in its own history.
The novel also critiques the idea that displacement can be resolved by returning. Ana returns to Miami, but she is still undocumented, still without family, still at risk. The ending, in which Carmen gives her the book, offers a glimmer of connection but not a solution. The novel suggests that the unequal treatment of migrants is not an aberration but a structural feature of the system, and that individual acts of kindness—Jeanette taking in Ana, Carmen sheltering her—cannot undo the larger machinery of detention and deportation.
Study Questions and Answers
1. How does the novel contrast the experiences of Cuban exiles and Central American migrants?
The novel contrasts them through legal status, treatment, and family outcomes. Cuban exiles like Jeanette's mother benefit from policies like "wet foot, dry foot" that grant automatic status, while Central Americans like Gloria face detention, deportation, and family separation. Jeanette's own critique of this disparity in chapter 2 highlights the moral weight of the contrast.
2. What role do the books (Les Misérables and Cecilia Valdés) play in connecting different generations of displaced women?
The books serve as physical links between María Isabel's 1866 Cuba and present-day Miami. They carry the mantra "We are force," which becomes a symbol of resilience. The books are passed down, stolen, and eventually given to Ana, showing how displacement creates both inheritance and rupture.
3. How does the novel complicate the idea of "home" for its characters?
Home is never stable. María Isabel loses her home to war; Jeanette feels alienated from both Cuba and Miami; Gloria is expelled from the U.S.; Ana returns to a place that deported her. The novel suggests that home is not a fixed location but a set of relationships and memories that can be lost or recreated.
4. What is the significance of the mantra "We are force" in the context of migration?
The mantra is ambiguous: it asserts agency and resilience, but also implies being forced—forced to leave, to survive, to love. It connects María Isabel's resistance to colonial censorship with Gloria's endurance in detention and Ana's dangerous crossing. The novel uses it to show that survival is both an act of will and a response to coercion.
5. How does the novel's non-chronological structure reflect the theme of displacement?
The fragmented timeline mirrors the disorienting experience of migration, where past and present blur and memory is unreliable. Ana cannot distinguish her own memories from her mother's stories, and Jeanette's trip to Cuba forces her to confront a history she has been told to forget. The structure emphasizes that displacement is not a linear journey but a recursive condition.