![]() “Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa’s novels are as necessary to Puerto Rican literature as rice and beans are to the Puerto Rican diet. No other writer addresses our African roots with such luminous intensity." -Ernesto Qui ñ onez, Bodega Dreams and Ta í na "Dahlma's prose is a poetic hurricane, A Woman of Endurance is an exquisite jewel of a novel. By telling this story through the eyes of Pola, one of those slaves, Llanos-Figueroa has written the grand epic that Pola-and all the other forgotten women of endurance-richly deserve." -Cristina García, author of Dreaming in Cuban With exquisite, patient, poetic prose, Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa illuminates the world of 19th-century Puerto Rican haciendas and the slavery on which they depended. ![]() "A Woman of Endurance is a new classic of Caribbean literature. Conveying a wide sweep of history, as witnessed by several generations of women, the book has the warmth of autobiography while sustaining a firm and stately control of technique and language.” - 2010 PEN Literary Awards Program on Daughters of the Stone ![]() And it does so with brilliant flourishes in a narrative both gripping and intimate. It also tells us of a culture and nation that is underrepresented in our literature: Puerto Rico. “Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa's Daughters of the Stone sings as few novels can. With its unflinching description of slavery, it should also appeal to readers of slave narratives like Charles Johnson's Middle Passage and Manu Herbstein's Ama: A Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade.” - Library Journal (starred review) on Daughters of the Stone ” This commanding exploration of women's history will resonate with readers of strong African American feminist narratives like those of Toni Morrison and Ntozake Shange. “ compelling debut…Beautifully told by Llanos-Figueroa, this is an unforgettable saga of the magical beliefs binding one family for generations.” - Booklist on Daughters of the Stone From the sadistic barbarity of her first experiences, she moves on to receive compassion and support from a revitalizing new community. Along the way, she learns to recognize and embrace the many faces of love-a mother’s love, a daughter’s love, a sister’s love, a love of community, and the self-love that she must recover before she can offer herself to another. It is ultimately, a novel of the triumph of the human spirit even under the most brutal of conditions. Readers are invited to join Pola in her journey to healing. But this is not a novel of defeat but rather one of survival, regeneration, and reclamation of common humanity. The resulting babies are taken from her as soon as they are born. Pola loses the faith that has guided her and becomes embittered and defensive. The dehumanizing violence of her life almost destroys her. Combining the haunting power of Toni Morrison’s Beloved with the evocative atmosphere of Phillippa Gregory’s A Respectable Trade, Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa’s groundbreaking novel illuminates a little discussed aspect of history-the Puerto Rican Atlantic Slave Trade-witnessed through the experiences of Pola, an African captive used as a breeder to bear more slaves.Ī Woman of Endurance, set in nineteenth-century Puerto Rican plantation society, follows Pola, a deeply spiritual African woman who is captured and later sold for the purpose of breeding future slaves.
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