The speaker is a Cuban-American poet who was brought to the United States as an infant. He initially believes he has distanced himself from his cultural origins and the pain of exile. Observing his friend's deep longing for their shared homeland awakens his own intense nostalgia and buried sensory memories of his family.

Ruth is a Cuban-American anthropologist and writer who left Havana at age five. Living in the freezing climate of Michigan, she feels captive and isolated from her cultural roots. She actively tries to recreate and preserve her Cuban identity through dance, traditional food, and her writing.

The father of the speaker represents a direct physical tie to the Cuban land. He is remembered for his hard physical labor cutting sugarcane fields, an image the speaker desperately wishes to revisit in his memory.

The speaker's mother is remembered for her resourcefulness in Cuba before the family's exile. She sold guavas on the road to afford her textbooks, symbolizing the family's determination and the tangible reality of their past.

The speaker's grandmother anchors his sensory memories of a true Cuban home. She exists in his mind's eye standing in the kitchen, preparing traditional sweet rice dishes while the family gathers around her.

Ruth's mother is part of the Jewish-Cuban heritage Ruth longs to connect with. The speaker imagines Ruth praying the Kaddish at the synagogue in El Vedado, honoring the religious traditions her mother practiced.

Ruth's grandfather owned a lace shop on Calle Aguacate in Cuba. Because of her early exile, Ruth never actually met him there, leaving her to pretend to visit him for lunch in her mind.