Generational Trauma and Identity Construction in Cristina García's Dreaming in Cuban and The Agüero Sisters

As a core representative of Cuban-American literature, Cristina García focuses her creations on the exile experiences of Cubans after the Cuban Revolution, and profoundly depicts the identity predicament and intergenerational transmission of trauma faced by the Cuban-American "one-and-a-half generation". Taking her representative works Dreaming in Cuban (1992) and The Agüero Sisters (1997) as the research objects, this paper systematically analyzes the specific manifestations and transmission mechanisms of generational trauma in the two novels, as well as its profound influence on the identity construction of the Cuban-American one-and-a-half generation from the interdisciplinary perspectives of postcolonial theory, feminist criticism and trauma studies. The study finds that García adopts narrative strategies such as female lineage inheritance, memory politics and cross-cultural conflict to reveal how Cuban exile trauma transcends generational boundaries and shapes the "in-between identity" of the one-and-a-half generation who neither fully belong to Cuba nor integrate into the United States. It is further pointed out that the process of the one-and-a-half generation experiencing, negotiating and reconstructing generational trauma has become an important path for them to construct a unique hybrid cultural identity.