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. A 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. 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. But this is not a novel of defeat but rather one of survival, regeneration, and reclamation of common humanity. Readers are invited to join Pola in her journey to healing. 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.
Reviews with the most likes.
This book absolutely wrecked me. It broke me into a billion pieces and two months later I'm still putting the pieces together. Two months later, I still can't find the words that will do this book justice.
I had to put this book down several times and walk away. There is so much raw pain and horror but there is love, friendship and kinship. There is distrust and new trust. There is hopelessness and there is hope. Through it all, there is resistance in every fiber of their being. These are my people.
Blood memory is real.
The only criticisms I have are of Bomba (I will forever be a hawk about it). Bomba simply was not used as a religious music. There are reasons behind it and no matter how much folks want to make it that way, it's just not factually correct. If handkerchiefs were tied to the drums, the different colors did not represent a certain deity. Plena didn't exist in the time the story was written. I know this is a work of fiction but it is written based on factual events or in a period of time that very real things took place. When there are so many few stories about Puerto Rico, I think it's important to be as factual as one can be with things that were real then and real now.
