The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom - Hardcover

Engle, Margarita

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805086749 ISBN 13: 9780805086744

Verlag: HENRY HOLT JUVENILE, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

It is 1896. Cuba has fought three wars for independence and still is not free. People have been rounded up in reconcentration camps with too little food and too much illness. Rosa is a nurse, but she dares not go to the camps. So she turns hidden caves into hospitals for those who know how to find her.

Black, white, Cuban, Spanish—Rosa does her best for everyone. Yet who can heal a country so torn apart by war? Acclaimed poet Margarita Engle has created another breathtaking portrait of Cuba.

The Surrender Tree is a 2009 Newbery Honor Book, the winner of the 2009 Pura Belpre Medal for Narrative and the 2009 Bank Street - Claudia Lewis Award, and a 2009 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Margarita Engle is a Cuban American poet, novelist, and journalist whose work has been published in many countries. She is the author of young adult nonfiction books and novels in verse including The Poet Slave of Cuba, Hurricane Dancers, The Firefly Letters, and Tropical Secrets. The Surrender Tree was a Newbery Honor Book. She lives in northern California.

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The Surrender Tree

Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom

By Margarita Engle

Henry Holt and Company

Copyright © 2008 Margarita Engle
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8050-8674-4

Contents

PART ONE The Names of the Flowers 1850–51, 
PART TWO The Ten Years' War 1868–78, 
PART THREE The Little War 1878–80, 
PART FOUR The War of Independence 1895–98, 
PART FIVE The Surrender Tree 1898–99, 
AUTHOR'S NOTE, 
HISTORICAL NOTE, 
CHRONOLOGY, 
SELECTED REFERENCES, 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, 

CHAPTER 1

PART One

The Names of the Flowers 1850–51

    Rosa

    Some people call me a child-witch,
    but I'm just a girl who likes to watch
    the hands of the women
    as they gather wild herbs and flowers
    to heal the sick.

    I am learning the names of the cures
    and how much to use,
    and which part of the plant,
    petal or stem, root, leaf, pollen, nectar.

    Sometimes I feel like a bee making honey —
    a bee, feared by all, even though the wild bees
    of these mountains in Cuba
    are stingless, harmless, the source
    of nothing but sweet, golden food.


    Rosa

    We call them wolves,
    but they're just wild dogs,
    howling mournfully —
    lonely runaways,
    like cimarrones,
    the runaway slaves who survive
    in deep forest, in caves of sparkling crystal
    hidden behind waterfalls,
    and in secret villages
    protected by magic

    protected by words —
    tales of guardian angels,
    mermaids, witches,
    giants, ghosts.


    Rosa

    When the slavehunter brings back
    runaways he captures,
    he receives seventeen silver pesos
    per cimarrón,
    unless the runaway is dead.
    Four pesos is the price of an ear,
    shown as proof that the runaway slave
    died fighting, resisting capture.

    The sick and injured
    are brought to us, to the women,
    for healing.

    When a runaway is well again,
    he will either choose to go back to work
    in the coffee groves and sugarcane fields,
    or run away again
    secretly, silently, alone.


    Lieutenant Death

    My father keeps a diary.
    It is required
    by the Holy Brotherhood of Planters,
    who hire him to catch runaway slaves.

    I watch my father write the numbers
    and nicknames of slaves he captures.
    He does not know their real names.

    When the girl-witch heals a wounded runaway,
    the cimarrón is punished, and sent back to work.
    Even then, many run away again,
    or kill themselves.
    But then my father chops each body
    into four pieces, and locks each piece in a cage,
    and hangs the four cages on four branches
    of the same tree.

    That way, my father tells me, the other slaves
    will be afraid to kill themselves.
    He says they believe
    a chopped, caged spirit cannot fly away
    to a better place.


    Rosa

    I love the sounds
    of the jungle at night.

    When the barracoon
    where we sleep
    has been locked,
    I hear the music
    of crickets, tree frogs, owls,
    and the whir of wings
    as night birds fly,
    and the song of un sinsonte,
    a Cuban mockingbird,
    the magical creature
    who knows how to sing
    many songs all at once,
    sad and happy,
    captive and free ...
    songs that help me sleep
    without nightmares,
    without dreams.


    Rosa

    The names of the villages where runaways hide
    are Mira-Cielo, Look-at-the-Sky
    and Silencio, Silence
    Soledad, Loneliness
    La Bruja, The Witch....

    I watch the slavehunter as he writes his numbers,
    while his son,
    the boy we secretly call Lieutenant Death,
    helps him make up big lies.

    The slavehunter and his boy agree to exaggerate,
    in order to make their work
    sound more challenging,
    so they will seem like heroes
    who fight against armies with guns,
    instead of just a few frightened, feverish, hungry,
    escaped slaves,
    armed only with wooden spears,
    and secret hopes.


    Lieutenant Death

    When I call the little witch
    a witch-girl, my father corrects me —
    Just little witch is enough, he says, don't add girl,
    or she'll think she's human, like us.

    A pile of ears sits on the ground,
    waiting to be counted.

    This boy has a wound,
    my father tells the witch.
    Heal him.

    The little witch stares at my arm, torn by wolves,
    and I grin,
    not because I have to be healed by a slave-witch,
    but because it is comforting to...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: HENRY HOLT JUVENILE
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2008
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0805086749
• ISBN 13: 9780805086744
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 169
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar