The Firefly Letters

 

 

 

 

Henry Holt and Company, LLC

Publishers since 1866

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New York, New York 10010

www.HenryHoltKids.com

Henry Holt
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is a registered trademark of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

Copyright © 2010 by Margarita Engle

All rights reserved.

Distributed in Canada by H. B. Fenn and Company Ltd.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Engle, Margarita.

The firefly letters : a suffragette's journey to Cuba / Margarita Engle.—1st ed.

p.    cm.

ISBN 978-0-8050-9082-6

1. Women—Suffrage—Cuba—Juvenile poetry. 2. Young adult poetry, American. I. Title.

PS3555.N4254F57 2010 813'.54—dc22 2009023445

First Edition—2010

Printed in February 2010 in the United States of America

by R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company, Harrisonburg, Virginia

1  3  5  7  9  10  8  6  4  2

for Curtis, Victor, and Nicole
with love
and for Reka Simonsen
with gratitude

 

 

Your majesty
. . . I can from Cuba, better than from any other point on this side of the globe, speak of the New World, because Cuba lies between North and South America . . . Heaven and earth, the people, language, laws, manners, style of building, every thing is new . . .

 

FREDERIKA BREMER,

in a letter to Carolina Amelia,

Queen Dowager of Denmark

April, 1851

I remember a wide river

and gray parrots with patches of red feathers

flashing across the African sky

like traveling stars

or Cuban fireflies.

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.

Spanish sea captains and Arab merchants

are not the only men

who think of girls

as livestock.

Mamá has informed me

that we will soon play hostess

to a Swedish traveler, a woman

called Fredrika, who is known to believe

that men and women are completely equal.

What an odd notion!

Papá has already warned me to ignore

any outlandish ideas that I might hear

from our strange visitor.

I have never imagined a woman

who could travel all over the world

just like a man!

Mamá says Fredrika

does not speak much Spanish,

so we will have to speak to her in English.

Cecilia can help.

I'm so glad Papá

taught one of the slave girls

how to speak the difficult language

of all the American engineers

who work at our sugar mills,

giving orders to the slaves.

I am sorry to say

that Cecilia's English

is much better than mine.

She is just a slave,

but she does have a way

with words.

Translating is a skill that makes her useful

in her own gloomy, sullen,

annoying way.

The visiting lady wears a little hat

and carries a bag of cookies

and bananas.

Her shoes are muddy.

She asks so many questions

that Elena turns her over to me

because my English is better

and I am a slave

accustomed to the rudeness

of strangers.

When I ask the foreign lady

where she is from,

she points toward the North Star.

Can her native country

truly be as distant

as the Congo,

my lost home?

In all my travels, I have never smelled

any place as unfamiliar as Cuba.

Even here in the lovely city of Matanzas,

with elegant shops and ladies in carriages

waving silk fans,

there is always the scent