Bibliographic Information: Engle, Margarita. The Firefly Letters: a suffragette’s letter to Cuba.Henry Holt and Co. 2010. ISBN 9780805090826
Genre: Poetry, Historical fiction
Reading Level: Grades 5-12
Curriculum ties: History, Literature, Social Studies
Awards: ALA Notable Children’s Books – Older Readers Category: 2011, A Pura Belpre Award for Narrative Honor Book, 2011.
Note: Author of the award winning The Surrender Tree (2008).
Reader’s Annotation: Three young girls challenge society norms to explore what Cuba has to offer.
Plot Summary: Set in Mantanzas, Cuba in the 1851, three young girl’s lives become intertwined by fate. Elena is a twelve year old living in Cuba with her parents who are traditional and very protective of Elena, (they think she should be married by now) as most Cubans are of their daughters. The freedom to step foot outside is not something that women in Mantanzas have so when Fredrika Bremer, a Swedish Consulate comes to visit in Cuba, she decides to empower the women and show them that there is more to life outside the luxurious silk, lace and marble compound. Fredrika is given a translator, Cecilia, to navigate the countryside. Cecilia, fluent in both English and Spanish, is a slave brought from Africa by Elena’s parents. She is suffering from a lung disease. and dearly misses her homeland. Although from different walks of life, the three young women have a common goal of freedom and equality for everyone.
Critical Evaluation: The entire story is told with each girl taking turns telling their story in a poetic form. Through the language used, you could easily identify who was the narrator but the level of imagination and thought of each different girl was equally deep. All girls speak of love in association with the the value of their freedom. Fredrika was once asked for her hand by a country preacher that she was in love with but she denied him in worry that being a wife, she would lose her freedom to roam. Celia talks about how Elena’s father chose her husband Beni. She recounts that maybe if she was free to chose Beni on her own, she might know how to love him. Beni says that if he was free, he would have married a girl that he loved in his homeland before he was brought by slavery. Elena, who’s father will also pick her suitor, is arranging a hope chest in the hopes that she can run away and elope.
Booktalking Ideas:
Discuss: what is oppression. Can you think of any examples in today’s world?
What is he symbolism of the fireflies? Interpret the title.
Discuss the relationship between Fredrika and Cecilia. Do you think Cecilia influences her in any way? Explain.
Challenge Issues/ Defense:
Challenge Issues: Slavery
Challenge defense ideas:
• This book was based on true accounts from the letters of Fredrika Bremer.
In the book, Cecilia, as a slave, had more freedoms than Elena, the privileged daughter.
Why was this book included?: For it’s imagination, poetry and Latin American influences.
Author Information: Margarita Engle is a Cuban-American author of young adult novels in verse. “The Surrender Tree” received a Newbery Medal, Pura Belpré Medal, Jane Addams Award, Américas Award, Claudia Lewis Award and Lee Bennett Hopkins Honor. Her first picture book was “Summer Birds: The Butterflies of Maria Merian.” Her most recent work is “The Firefly Letters: A Suffragette’s Journey to Cuba” (Henry Holt). Based on the diaries and letters of Swedish suffragist Fredrika Bremer, who spent three months in Cuba in 1851, this book focuses on oppressed women, the privileged as well as the enslaved, in three alternating free-verse narratives. Engle lives in California.
(Author information obtained from the Library of Congress. Retrieved from: http://www.loc.gov/bookfest/kids-teachers/authors/margarita_engle.html)
Margarita Engle is a botanist and the Cuban-American author of several books about the island, most recently The Poet Slave of Cuba, a Biography of Juan Francisco Manzano (Henry Holt & Co., April, 2006). Short works appear in a wide variety of anthologies and journals, including Atlanta Review, Bilingual Review, California Quarterly, Caribbean Writer, Hawai’i Pacific Review, and Nimrod. Awards include a Cintas Fellowship, a San Diego Book Award, and a 2005 Willow Review Poetry Award. Margarita lives in California, where she enjoys hiking in the Sierra Nevada mountains, and helping her husband with his volunteer work for a wilderness search-and-rescue dog training program.
(Author information obtained by Poet Seers. Retrieved from: http://www.poetseers.org/submissions/2006/margarita_engle/)
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