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“CONSTRUCTING MEMORY THROUGH TECHNOLOGY:
BRAND NEW MEMORY BY ELĺAS MIGUEL MUÑOZ
Isabel Valiela
Gettysburg College
Elías Miguel Muñoz is a Cuban-American writer who belongs to the “oneand-a-half
generation,” a term first coined by Cuban sociologist Rubén G.
Rumbaut. It refers to immigrant children who were taken from their homeland
during childhood or young adolescence, beginning their journey into adulthood in
the United States. In Rumbaut’s study on migration and adaptation of
Indochinese refugee adults and children, he coins this term which will eventually
be adopted to apply to other groups as well:
Children who were born abroad but are being educated and come of
age in the United States form what may be called the “1.5” generation.
These refugee youth must cope with two crisis-producing and identitydefining
life transitions: (1) adolescence and the task of managing the
transition from childhood to adulthood, and (2) acculturation and the
task of managing the transition from one sociocultural environment to
another. The “first” generation of their parents, who are fully part of the
“old” world, face only the latter; the “second” generation of children
being born and reared in the United States, who as such are fully part of
the “new” world, will need to confront only the former. But members of
the “1.5” generation form a distinctive cohort in that in many ways they
are marginal to both the old and the new worlds, and are fully part of
neither of them. Still they need to search for an identity and define
themselves with respect both to their society of origin, to which they
may never return, and to the adoptive society where they are being
formed, which itself is rapidly changing. (Rumbaut 61)
Elías Miguel Muñoz and the “One-and-a-Half” Generation
Gustavo Pérez Firmat, who was brought to the U.S. from Cuba by his
parents at the age of eleven, popularized the term “one-and-a-half generation”
in his book Life on the Hyphen: The Cuban-American Way, applying it specifically
to his generation of Cuban-Americans. One of the main theses of Pérez-Firmat’s
book is that Cuban-American culture is to a large extent an achievement of his
generation (4), and therefore, it is significant to explore how this group worked
through its unique marginalities. Other well-know writers who belong to this
generational group are Cristina García, Roberto G. Fernández, Virgilio Suárez,
and Achy Obejas. 1 This group is marked by a strong need to explore the issue of
identity, and their work shows the many ways in which “Cubanidad” (Cubanity)
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