From School Library Journal
Grade 7-9–Cárdenas presents a stark portrait of the difficult life of a young African-Cuban girl. Each brief chapter represents a letter that she writes to her deceased mother. She tells of her unkind grandmother, her aunt's abusive boyfriend, and her cousin's sudden illness and paralysis. Although the main character, who remains unnamed, wants to die and join her mother in heaven, she continues to live and eventually to hope that she might find her father. As in Kimberly Willis Holt's
Keeper of the Night (Holt, 2003), Cárdenas sets his protagonist's struggle with grief in a rich cultural framework. The author's modern Cuba is a world in which Christianity and superstition, whites and blacks, love and infidelity coexist uneasily. The main character's voice is authentic, and the other characters, sketched with spare lines, are believable and sympathetic. The girl is only 10 at the beginning of the book but thematic elements and a nonexplicit description of the aunt's sexual encounters make the book better suited to an older audience. Short chapters and lucid writing will appeal to reluctant readers who want reassurance that even the bleakest periods of one's life can be endured.
–Donna Cardon, Provo City Library, UT Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Gr. 5-8. Overwhelmed by the death of her mother, a 10-year-old girl writes to her Querida Mama in terse letters about loneliness and grief and about the abuse the child suffers at her new school and as an unwanted newcomer in her relatives' home. She is never named, except in the insults she endures because of her dark African American appearance. Even Grandma, who believes in "improving the race by marrying white," calls the child
bembona ("thick lips"). Unger's simple, sometimes poetic translation of the book, which was originally published in Cuba, is always true to the child's voice; there are no preachy messages. There's an interesting plot, as well: Who is the child's papa? Why does Grandma hate the girl so much? Will the child find friendship with her troubled white classmate, Roger (who is ashamed of his prostitute mother), and get the adult support she needs? The prose is stark, but the story, including a nonexplicit episode of sexual abuse, will grab readers who can appreciate honesty about painful identity issues.
Hazel RochmanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
