In 1851, author and activist Fredrika Bremer spent three months in Cuba, traveling around the island with a young African-born slave who belonged to her hosts and who served as Bremer's translator. Drawing upon the nineteenth century writings and sketches of Fredrika Bremer, an early, important, and still relatively unknown figure in the women's rights movement, Margarita Engle has crafted THE FIREFLY LETTERS, a prose poetry dramatization of Bremer's time on the island.
The story is told in alternating poems by Fredrika, her young translator Cecilia, by Cecilia's husband, and by Elena the fictional daughter of Bremer's hosts, a twelve year-old growing up in wealth and privilege who often seems to have even less freedom than the slaves owned by her father.
It is when Fredrika leaves the confines of her host's home with Cecilia in tow (leaving young Elena stuck at home without companionship), and sets out across the island, that we come to grasp how the lively and rich culture that the slaves have brought with them contrasts so sharply with the strait-jacketed patriarchal society and customs from which Fredrika has escaped and to which Elena is a young, unwilling victim.
THE FIREFLY LETTERS is a sterling example of how less can so often be more. Good prose poetry -- like all good poetry -- relies on strategic employment of the right words to paint pictures. As with so many great poetry novels, there is so much payoff here and relatively few words.
I had not previously heard of Fredrika Bremer. I had no idea that Sweden and Denmark had enacted that legislation so far in advance of the U.S. I had no idea what Cuba was like 160 years ago. And, yet, in learning so much, I was able to read through this latest work by award-winner Margarita Engle in a very short amount of time, and then return to reread and savor a bunch of the poems I'd marked along the way.
I'm not the biggest fan of Women's History Month. (I don't like the idea that one of the twelve months is for women, arguably leaving the other eleven for celebrating the brilliant guys who seem to have always gotten us into these messes.) But, being that it is March, it does make good sense to line up a copy of this book asap.
