The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom

Transcription

>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. >> Hello everyone. Good afternoon. I'd like to ask you to take a seat please so that we can go on to our next presentation. So how is everyone? Good, good, good. I've been asked to take care of one little piece of housekeeping before we begin. The presentations in the pavilion are being filmed for the Library of Congress website and for their activities. That young man, that handsome young man that's sitting back there, he's going to wave. And he's going to appreciate that you be mindful of that, not bump into the risers etcetera so he can get the best filming possible. So with that said, hello everyone. My name is Laurie Montenaro. I work Telemundo Network here in Washington, D.C. and could have we have asked for a better day for the National Book Festival. After all that rain the past years I think this is a great day. I am certainly very, very excited [Speaking in a foreign language] I am also very honored [Speaking in a foreign language] to be here today to present our guest author, poet and journalist, Margarita Engle. However, I have a little secret. There's another reason I'm excited, because as Margarita, I am of Cuban descent. Not from Havana though, I'm from Oriente, but its Cuba and her love for books began when she was very, very young. She started to read when she was young. She started to write since she was very young and I think we are all blessed with the fact that she is sharing her gift with us. She has a way with words and you all know what I mean. But I have to say from someone who's from the Caribbean we do have a way with words. Some of us we [Sound effects] as you all know. But seriously she does have this wonderful gift of prose and this has earned her many, many words. For example for two years now she has won the Pura Belpret Award. It also marks the very, very first time that a Hispanic, [Speaking in a foreign language] author has received such a distinction. I love the fact that she says [Applause] Yes. I love the fact that she says, "I want to write for young people, not just children but teenagers because they are the future." I know how many distractions they have in their lives and it's a privilege when they actually listen to a poem and ask amazingly intelligent questions and they think about things and are aware of the world and their surroundings." On critic said, "She gracefully packs a lot of information into a spare and elegant narrative that will make the historical moment be as describing and accessible to a wide range of readers." Another said, "Engle's prose breeds life into each character and her rich use of language catapults the reader into each setting." This is her first time at the National Book Festival and we hope Margarita it is not your last. Can I ask all of you to please stand up? Please let's stand up and welcome her. Give her a warm [Speaking in a foreign language] Margarita Engel. [Applause] >> Margarita Engel: Thank you so much. Thank you Laurie for that beautiful introduction. Writing is an exploration. No matter what I set out to write I always discover that I have explored some aspect of freedom whether social, emotional or spiritual. I wrote my most recent novel and verse, The Firefly Letters, because I felt such deep admiration for Fredrika Bremer, a woman who is far ahead of her time. A courageous Swedish women's rights advocate who visited my ancestral homeland of Cuba in 1851, at a time when women simply did not travel alone; courage and compassion are stories that remain relevant for all of us at any age and in any historical context. With the help of Cecilia, a young pregnant, enslaved African born translator Fredrika Bremer wandered all over the countryside interviewing slaves and freed slaves as well as poor whites from Spain and from Cuba. Her diaries and letters provide the most complete known record of daily life on the island at that time. While researching this story I became fascinated by the relationship between Fredrika and Cecilia. I wondered how they might have influenced each other and I also imagined Elena, a fictional upper class girl who chaperoned life was restricted to the indoor world of silks and lace. And whose future offered nothing beyond a forced marriage to a wealthy stranger. Could three young women from such different backgrounds become friends? For me, one of the most intriguing aspects of Fredrika Bremers diary was the image of three young women roaming the countryside buying freedom for fireflies that had been captured by children who used them as playthings. From that point on the story became one about changing the world by making hopeful choices in situations that seemed hopeless. Because they would buy freedom from fireflies, turn them loose and then the children would capture them again and then they'd have to buy their freedom again, and yet they didn't give up. They kept doing this and it became a metaphor for me of the struggle for freedom within their human world. My connection to the history of Cuba is personal. My American father traveled to the island after seeing National Geographic pictures of my Cuban mother's hometown of Trinidad on the south central coast. And even though they did no speak the same language, they fell in love at first sight. And since they are both artists who have now been married for 62 years [Applause] they communicated by passing sketches back and forth. Young people will get in trouble if they repeat this in class. But it worked for my parents. They were soon married and although I was born and raised in my father's hometown of Los Angeles, California we spent summers in Cuba where I developed a deep bond with my extended family and I also developed a lifelong passion for tropical nature and for the mysteries to the islands past. During one of our summers to Cuba, diplomatic relations between the island and the U.S. broken down and after the 1962 missile crisis travel was forbidden. So even though my experience was not that of a Cuban born refugee, I felt as if I had inherited a surrealistic form of exile. Life seemed like science fiction. One day I had a huge extended family and the next day they were as far out of reach as if they were on a distant planet. I wondered about the lives of my cousins. I wondered what my life would have been like if we had settled in my mother's homeland instead of my father's. And even today after returning to the island many times as an adult, I still feel a profound sense of wonder about the strangeness of life. That is why I choose poetry as a suitable vessel for the complex riddles of history and the depths of emotion. It is also why I choose to write for young readers who are constantly faced with troubling situations and difficult decisions. I hope that the courage and kindness of young women I wrote about in the Firefly Letters and of Rosa la Bayamesa and The Surrender Tree and Juan Francisco Manzano and the Poet Slave of Cuba and of the people in Tropical Secrets. I hope that all of these characters will serve as an inspiration during modern times as young people struggle to make their own hopeful choices in situations that might seem hopeless. My other novels and verse for young adults are also tributes to this same spirit of courage and compassion. The Poet Slave of Cuba tells the true story of Juan Francisco Manzano, a child who taught himself how to read and became a great poet despite the obstacles of slavery and cruelty. The Surrender Tree is about Rosa la Bayamesa, a wilderness nurse who healed soldiers from both sides during Cuba's three wars for independence from Spain. And then when the United States charged into the battle during the final years which are known in the U.S. as the Spanish-American war although they are still known in Cuba as the third war for independence from Spain, Rosa la Bayamesa healed American soldiers. She hid in caves. She hid in jungles. She used wild plants so again in a situation that most of us would have seen as hopeless and we'd say, "Oh I wish I could help these wounded soldiers or these people who are ill or suffering from malaria or yellow fever, you now what can I do?" Well she figured out something to do. She experimented with wild plants. She learned how to use what she had available and her story is especially amazing because in Cuba it says if you combined the war for independence or revolutionary war with the civil war, because the struggle for independence from Spain and the struggle for freedom from slavery coincided. They happened at the same time. In October of 1868 planters freed their slaves and went to war against Spain, declared independence and fought side by side with former slaves for independence from Spain. Rosa la Bayamesa received her freedom at that time. But instead of going off to the city to enjoy her newfound freedom, she stayed and made the decision to help others. And this is just so amazing to me. I can't imagine that kind of courage and compassion. And so that's why I wanted to write about these types of people, her and Fredrika Bremer and Juan Francisco Manzano. I write about people that I admire. And truly I have to say their stories haunt me until I write about them and then they continue to haunt me afterwards. I just find the profoundly inspiring. My third young adult novel and verse is called Tropical Secrets and it's about Holocaust refugees who found a safe harbor in Havana receiving the kindness of strangers when Cuban teenagers volunteered to teach them Spanish. Again, the kind of courage and compassion involved in a situation like that is hard to imagine and yet that one is so much more recent in history. And these things that seem so impossible, how could such a thing have occurred have occurred within the memories of living people. And so I felt like I really wanted to honor the actions that were taken in places where Holocaust refugees did receive the kindness of strangers in a safe harbor. What happened is the ships that left Germany in the late 1930's filled with German-Jewish refugees were turned away from New York and Toronto and then they turned southward and anchored in Havana harbor until most of the refugees did receive asylum. I think that the contribution of several Latin American countries during that period of time is extremely complex because I don't want to sugar coat it and make it sound like everybody welcomed them. There were tragedies and there was trauma and there was trickery but most of the refugees did actually become Cuban and I wanted to write about the adjustment that it was for them to think that they were headed for New York and were going to have to learn English and then end up in the tropics having to learn Spanish and become Cuban. In March of 2011 my next novel and verse will be released. It's called Hurricane Dancers: The First Caribbean Pirate Shipwreck. It's set in 1509 a much more difficult time period to research because so little was written that long ago. And that which was written was only written from one point of view, from the Spanish point of view since they had the written language. This book is about the dramatic encounter between peaceful Cuban Indians on the south central coast just a few years later became my mother's hometown and the first Caribbean pirate who was shipwrecked along with his hostage, a brutal conquistador. During the course of the research of this book I became a subject of the Cuban DNA project verifying what I had always instinctively suspected. My maternal DNA is Native American. For five centuries almost all history books have stated with absolute certainty that all Cuban Indians are extinct. But the history books were wrong and DNA studies are proving this. Maternal DNA studies in particular because women did survive the near genocide of the 1511 conquest of Cuba by Spain. So I wanted to write about Taino and Siboney Indians and also about the mixed race children because 1509 there were already children who were half Spanish and half Indian. And the Spaniards -- Africans were not the first slaves in Cuba. The Spaniards enslaved the Cuban Indians during those early years and the mixed raced children were known as "broken" children. So I really wanted to write about those survivors who did manage in body as well as spirit to overcome incredible odds. Now when I research a historical topic I try to read everything that I can get my hands on with fresh eyes, asking myself whether the people telling a story really understood their subject or were they merely repeating rumors. In order to be sure that I've researched thoroughly I use interlibrary loan, borrowing diaries and other older references that are not always available completely online yet. I search especially for first person accounts because they contain the emotional aspects of daily life answering the question what did it feel like at that time. Once the research is complete the process of writing begins. And while research is painstaking and meticulous poetry is expansive and imaginative and my hope is that the two moods will blend offering a glimpse into the lives of people who lived long ago. When I write a novel and verse I feel as if wilderness is one of my characters, forests, animals and this Cuban weather that we have here today are powerful forces in my stories and that is because I studied agriculture and botany along with creative writing and I did that because I loved my ancestors farm in Cuba so much. It was a farm that I visited during those childhood summers and it has essentially become part of my imaginary world, sort of a magical world that I enter whenever I write about Cuba. I do have on picture book for younger children and another one coming out in another year or so. The one that's available now is called Summer Birds and its subtitled The Butterflies of Maria Merian. Maria Sibylla Merian and my interest in her comes from my botany and agriculture training. She was a woman who lived in the 1600's and became an amazing illustrator, scientist and explorer again at a time when women just did not travel alone and she studied butterfly lifecycles and proved the dystheory of spontaneous generation long before any of the men who got credit for that work. And my next picture book is about wilderness search and rescue dogs because in my real life in my spare time my husband trains search and rescue dogs to find lost hikers in the Sahara Nevada Mountains in California and I'm a volunteer victim. I hid in the forest so that the dogs can practice finding someone. [Laughter] Much of my writing is actually done during those quiet hours when I wait to be found. [Laughter] And thank you so much for your attention and I would be happy to answer any questions. This has been a wonderful experience. [Applause] Yes. >> [Inaudible background question] >> Margarita Engle: Thank you. Please come to the microphone when you do have a question. >> It's a great book. I got a copy for me and my niece you know. >> Margarita Engle: Thank you. >> But I wanted to ask you, did you study any other books sort of -- I could tell it was sort of new leaf for you when you went into that. >> Margarita Engle: Thank you. You know that's actually a very interesting question because I started to write Summer Birds about 25 years ago when I was still a practicing botanist and a professor of agronomy and at that time I did submit it to a few places for publication but there wasn't really in an interest in the publishing world for women who were far ahead of their time. So I brought back out from a hiding place in a drawer in my office and tried again many years later. >> There's a book Girls Look on the Rocks by Danita Atkins. And of course you've been honored. It's a kinship to that book I feel. >> Margarita Engle. Thank you. I hope so. >> I hope I didn't miss this but where did you first hear about the Holocaust survivors that came to Cuba because I had never heard of that until your book. >> Margarita Engle: You know I'm just shocked of how little known it is. There's an amazing non-fiction study for adults, very detailed called Tropical Diaspera by, I'm sorry I can't remember the first name but it's Levine. And it's just -- it's what alerted me to this incredible subject that should be better known and not just Cuba but some other Latin American countries also received a great many Holocaust refugees who had been turned away from the U.S. and Canada. Yes. >> Hi. Which authors do you turn to like mentor types. Books that you read that inspire you not like how to write books but ones that help you to write better. >> Margarita Engle: I love poetry and I just read poetry every day before I do anything else. Early in the morning I grab whatever poetry book is closest at hand and I'll read the same poetry books over and over. But I really have to credit Karen Hess' Witness as the book that helped to give me a form for The Poet Slave of Cuba, the multiple voice, novel and verse. I did get that idea from her book Witness. I had been trying to write about Juan Francisco Manzano in prose and it just never worked. And as soon as I switched to novel and verse form inspired by her, I never met her, but I always try to credit that book, it just flowed. So I think he was kind of reaching down pounding me on the head and saying I was a poet. Write about me in poetry. >> Thank you. >> Margarita Engle: Thank you. Yes. >> Hi. I am Jacqueline Jewels and I met you in Seattle at the ALJ convention where you won -- >> Margarita Engle: Yes, thank you. >> Sydney Taylor award for Tropical Secrets and while I was there I bought Surrender Tree. I read it on the plane ride home and after that I read Firefly Letters and Tropical Secrets and I just loved all three of them. >> Margarita Engle: Thank you so much. >> And I just want to thank you for all three of those books. >> Margarita Engle: Thank you so much. [Applause] And you're question reminds me to acknowledge the Sydney Taylor award which is a wonderful award for Tropical Secrets and I do want to mention that my personal connection to that story is that I did say that my father is American and traveled to Cuba, but his -- he was born and raised in Los Angeles but his parents came to the U.S. from the Ukraine as refugees from pogroms. So I do have a personal connection to that story as well. >> Hi. I actually happen to be a Cuban refugee from Trinidad and I was wondering what's your favorite Cuban writer or author? >> Margarita Engle: Well you know you and I might be cousins because that's a small town. Everybody I've ever met from there is a cousin. [Laughter] I just read Christina Garcia's Lady Matador's Hotel and really enjoyed it. And for young adult books I really enjoyed Nancy Osa's Cuba Fifteen and I just love so many poets and authors. My mind is cluttering up with names and I can't choose one, I'm sorry but thank you. >> Thank you for being here. >> Were there any other reasons you decided to write in verse? >> Margarita Engle: I feel like for me verse really helps me decide what I want to write about, because I can't fit everything on that page. I end up with a very crowded page and I really have to narrow my focus down to the things that are the most important to me, what aspects I really want to -- and at the same time I feel like I can put emotions in poetry -- with all the crowded page there wouldn't be room for those emotions in the same way in say a non-fiction history book. And I love to read a non-fiction history book but it's just not my passion for writing. My passion for writing is with poetry. Thank you. Are you a poet? Thank you. [Applause] >> One more thing congratulations to you rising to this stature. >> Margarita Engle: Thank you. >> My wife is a first time author. It is difficult to get published if you're a first time author. So what we did is we self-published and it's coming out in September. But the problem is how do you get recognized? Do you have an agent? >> Margarita Engle: No I do not have an agent. I sent the Poet Slave of Cuba into what is called the slush pile. The slush pile is thousands and thousands and thousands of books that editors sift through. And just am so grateful that an editor's assistant pulled the book out of the slush pile and gave it a chance. >> We'll try real hard. >> Margarita Engle: We'll try real hard. Yes. >> Hi I'm just wondering if your books are distributed in Cuba and if so what kind of reception they've received, especially for the Poet Slave in Cuba. >> Margarita Engle: No they aren't. There would not be any format for an American book seller to sell books in Cuba. The only one of my books that is at present in a bilingual format is The Surrender Tree, which is published now in a paperback that has the entire novel and verse in English first and then the entire novel and verse in Spanish in the same volume. It's not a facing page bilingual translation. But I just don't think that at present there would be a format for American publishers to -- I think it would violate the Trading with the Enemies Act of 1962. I'm guessing at that, but I just don't think there would be a format? Yes. Thank you so much. You've just been a wonderful audience. >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at www.loc.gov.