Winner of the Pura Belpre' Honor Book
by Margarita Engle
pp 151
Henry Holt and Company, New York 2010
ISBN 978-0-0850-9082-6
An artist paints a picture. They carefully plan their brushstrokes to set the right tone, to use the right colors, to tell the right story... somehow the artist knows all the right combinations to catch our eye and have us visit another world for awhile.
In The Firefly Letters: A Suffragette's Journey to Cuba Margarita Engle is the artist and her medium is poetry. Poetry that, like a great work of art, captures our attention and literally takes us on a journey that is quite transformative. One minute the reader is sitting in 2011 and the next he/she is thrown into the dark and sinful world of Cuba's slave culture in 1851.
The first page of this story which is told in alternating narrative poems, sets the tone:
"in the silence of night
I still hear my mother wailing,
and I see my father's eyes
refusing to meet mine.
I was eight, plenty old enough
to understand that my father was haggling
with a wandering slave trader,
agreeing to exchange me
for a stolen cow."
Engle tells this story from the perspective of three main characters and allows their alternating poems to weave true details with fiction in such a way that leaves the reader yearning for more. The setting is Cuba 1851 and Swedish born Fredrika Bremer, an author and activist, has come to experience what she thinks will be a quaint visit to a rustic country. What she finds instead is Elena, a twelve year old daughter from a wealthy family who yearns for her own freedom as a woman and her translator Cecilia, a young pregnant slave girl, who yearns for her family and for her freedom.
With Cecilia by her side to translate, Fredrika spends her days interviewing freed slaves, praying in the back of the church with the slave girls and telling of her own quest for freedom from her own family. Cecilia uses this time with Fredrika to tell her own tortured story that she has bottled up inside for years.
"The boats are close now -
I cannot stay!
The memory of arrival
and loss
is too fresh.
Fredrika does not see their faces yet,
all the children from a slave ship
riding in those small boats,
gliding toward this lonely shore
in chains.
...
Gasping for breath,
I struggle to remember
my mother's voice
and I struggle
to forget
all the rest..."
As Fredrika and Cecilia travel together to the other side of the island one is able to also come to realize the torment that Elena feels as a young women trapped by privilege and the expectations for women at this time in history.
"How disturbing it feels
to envy Cecilia,
a slave.
She is free,
at least for now,
to run and shout
out in the open
...
just like a man
or a boy."
As the three women become closer their quest for freedom for each other burns as bright as the fireflies that crowd the night skies. The question is will any one of them truly fly free?
The history behind this story of poems is as fascinating as the story. The Historical Nots at the end of the book gives a detailed look at the true Fredrika Bremer and her work for women's and children's rights and for her quest for peace across the globe.
Whether one is a history buff, women's rights advocate, or a lover of poetry this gentle yet powerful story should not be missed.
I would recommend this book to the youngest of young adults - 5th grade and up but would also highly recommended it to high schoolers and adults. The poems take the reader in and make a time in history truly come alive through the characters' eyes. It also provides a wonderful motivation piece to get students more interested in the history of Cuba, woman's rights, and the slave trade and could be used nicely in conjunction with some non-fiction resources about these specific historical events.
To learn more about Fredrika Bremer please read a brief biography here http://www.paperbackswap.com/Fredrika-Bremer/author/
To learn a little more about the Cuban slave trade click here.
To enjoy more of Margarita Engle's seemingly magical words you might enjoy her other books:
The Poet Slave of Cuba - winner of the Pura Belpre' Award. Click here for a review of this book.
The Surrender Tree Click here for a review of this book.
Tropical Secrets Click here for a review of this book.
If you enjoy historical fiction I would also highly recommend The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.
Similar to The Firefly Letters, this powerful story is told through engaging characters and reminds one of a heart breaking time in history, Nazi Germany.
