The Cuban Swimmer

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Drama Paper In the year 1984, author, Milcha Sanchez-Scott wrote the short story titled “The Cuban Swimmer”. This is the story of a young girl named Margarita Suarez who is in a swimming competition in the summer, located in the Pacific Ocean from San Pedro to Catalina Island. She is swimming behind a boat filled with her family. Her family consists of her father and coach, Eduardo Suarez, her mother, Aida Suarez, her brother, Simon Suarez and her Abuela. The story opens up with Margarita in the water already swimming in the race with her coaching her through a megaphone on the boat. Her swimming is interrupted by a helicopter filled with the race reporters. Simon turns on the boats TV and sees that they are being covered by the helicopter. The reporters state the fact that she is in first place and that although this race consists of mostly professionals, there is still room for the amateurs. This angers Aida because they called the whole family “simple people” on a “rag – tag boat”. She is so upset that she continues to pester Eduardo about how she wants an apology from the TV station when they got to shore. Margarita can’t hear any of the bickering that is going on the boat until her father gets the megaphone and yells at the rest of the family to shut up or they will break Margaritas concentration. After that, a little later on, Eduardo is on the bow of the boat keeping time on Margarita. Her mother and grandmother are praying in Spanish and Simon is just singing nonsense of what others are saying instead of being a look out of anything like sharks or other boats. The family all looks at Margarita who is swimming “like a seal” and that rainbows are dancing around her. Her father realizes that there are rainbows because she is swimming through and oil slick. Eduardo has Simon stop the boat and as Margarita comes up and stops swimming she is covered in oil. They

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