Andrea Rodés (Al Día) writes in regards to the background and inventive means of Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa, the New York-based Puerto Rican author who not too long ago printed A Lady of Endurance, a historic novel about slavery in Puerto Rico. [Many thanks to Peter Jordens for bringing this item to our attention. Also see previous post New Book: A Woman of Endurance, A Novel.]
Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa was born in 1949 in a Black group in Carolina, Puerto Rico, however when she was nonetheless a baby her household emigrated to New York, the place she nonetheless lives at this time. Regardless of the various years she has lived in america, her standing as Puerto Rican and Afro-Latina are two labels which have vastly marked each her private {and professional} life.
“You may’t separate my being Puerto Rican from my being of African descent. This, in a method or one other, ended up main me to turn into a author, since all the pieces I write has to do with the Afro-Puerto Rican world,” Llanos-Figueroa mentioned in a current report in The Washington Put up, the place she detailed the controversy generated amongst her schoolmates in New York that she was Latina and on the identical time Black and bilingual that sported Afro hair, as in the event that they have been incompatible issues.
“I feel basically individuals need to simplify issues. You’re both this otherwise you’re that. They don’t like issues,” she advised The Washington Put up. “And the truth is we’re all difficult, we’re all nuanced. And it could take just a little bit longer to know that this particular person can span two worlds.”
She first triumphed in 2009 together with her first novel, Daughters of the Stone, wherein she traces the historical past of 5 generations of an Afro-Puerto Rican household.
Llanos-Figueroa simply printed her second novel, A Lady of Endurance, which focuses on Pola, an enslaved lady in nineteenth century Puerto Rico.
Pitched as a historic novel, A Lady of Endurance forces the reader to confront the brutal historical past of slavery in Puerto Rico, in addition to the methods wherein enslaved communities ensured their human dignity regardless of the violence. These tales, largely silenced or erased, are the results of archival analysis on Puerto Rico’s slave plantations, in addition to oral custom and conversations with individuals in her group.
Raised for a time together with her grandparents in Puerto Rico, Llanos-Figueroa had the chance to be taught in regards to the traditions of rural Puerto Rico, together with storytelling by the ladies in her household, particularly the aged. A lot of her work relies on her experiences throughout this time.
Earlier than changing into a author (her first novel was printed when she was 60 years previous), Dahlma labored as a artistic writing and language and literature instructor in a New York public faculty and later as a librarian.
In 2021, Dahlma introduced the creation of the Figueroa Sisters Fellowship and the Figueroa Sisters Fellowship, two fellowships in honor of her mom and aunts. The primary is aimed toward serving to ladies writers over the age of fifty, and the second is for Puerto Rican college students serious about literature.
See authentic evaluate at https://aldianews.com/tradition/books-and-authors/woman-endurance
Additionally see: https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-06-306222-1, https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/dahlma-llanos-figueroa/a-woman-of-endurance