A Woman of Endurance

by Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa

Overview

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. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780063062221
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	04/12/2022
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	89,782
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa was born in Puerto Rico. As a child she was sent to live with her grandparents in the South Bronx, where she was introduced to the culture of rural Puerto Rico, including the storytelling skills that came naturally to the women, especially the older women, in her family. Much of her work is based on her experiences during this time. Llanos-Figueroa taught creative writing, language and literature in the New York City school system before becoming a young-adult librarian and writer. Her first novel, Daughters of the Stone, was a Finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, and her short stories have been published in anthologies and literary magazines such as Breaking Ground: Anthology of Puerto Rican Women Writers in New York 1980-2012, Growing Up Girl, Afro-Hispanic Review, Pleaides, Latino Book Review, Label Me Latina/o and Kweli Journal. She lives in New York City.

Editorial Reviews

02/07/2022

Llanos-Figueroa’s intense and bittersweet return (after Daughters of the Stone) traces the gut-wrenching life of a woman who struggles to survive slavery and find trust and love in her community. In 1836, Pola, 18, is captured in West Africa and enslaved on a sugarcane plantation in Puerto Rico. Pola is made a “breeding mare,” in her words, forcibly impregnated many times, her children immediately seized and sold into slavery. In vivid and often graphic detail, Llanos-Figueroa depicts the sadness and inhumanity of Pola’s life: her capture, the “man-beasts” who rape her, and her transfer to a second plantation to recover after having run away from the first and been caught, then beaten nearly to death. Rufina, an enslaved healer, mends Pola’s body, but Pola is combative with and untrusting of other enslaved people. As Pola becomes a maternal figure to Chachita, a starving, orphaned girl roaming outside the plantation, she begins to soften. Others help protect the girl, assistance for which Pola is grateful, but tragedy strikes again. The action builds toward a memorable end as Pola regains her belief in Mother Yemayá, her faith spirit. The restoration of her Yoruba spirituality and her deepened friendships are both touching and emotionally palpable. This harrowing story is hard to put down. Agent: Marie Brown, Marie Brown Assoc. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

[A] compelling debut…Beautifully told by Llanos-Figueroa, this is an unforgettable saga of the magical beliefs binding one family for generations.”  — Booklist on Daughters of the Stone

” This commanding exploration of women's history will resonate with readers of strong African American feminist narratives like those of Toni Morrison and Ntozake Shange. With its unflinching description of slavery, it should also appeal to readers of slave narratives like Charles Johnson's Middle Passage and Manu Herbstein's Ama: A Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade.”  — Library Journal (starred review) on Daughters of the Stone

“Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa's Daughters of the Stone sings as few novels can. It also tells us of a culture and nation that is underrepresented in our literature: Puerto Rico. And it does so with brilliant flourishes in a narrative both gripping and intimate. Conveying a wide sweep of history, as witnessed by several generations of women, the book has the warmth of autobiography while sustaining a firm and stately control of technique and language.” — 2010 PEN Literary Awards Program on Daughters of the Stone

"A Woman of Endurance is a new classic of Caribbean literature. With exquisite, patient, poetic prose, Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa illuminates the world of 19th-century Puerto Rican haciendas and the slavery on which they depended. By telling this story through the eyes of Pola, one of those slaves, Llanos-Figueroa has written the grand epic that Pola—and all the other forgotten women of endurance—richly deserve." — —Cristina García, author of Dreaming in Cuban

"Dahlma's prose is a poetic hurricane, A Woman of Endurance is an exquisite jewel of a novel. No other writer addresses our African roots with such luminous intensity." — _{—Ernesto Quiñonez, Bodega Dreams and Taína} 

“Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa’s novels are as necessary to Puerto Rican literature as rice and beans are to the Puerto Rican diet. A Woman of Endurance should be taught as both history and literature of las Americas; it cements Llanos-Figueroa as an urgent and critical voice for our times. Her rigorous and compassionate attention to the human experience of the horrific legacy of enslaved Black people in Puerto Rico is a triumph for literature, Puerto Rican and otherwise, and a testament to the enduring spirit of human beings.” — —Marisel Vera, author of The Taste of Sugar 

"A Woman of Endurance is a marvelous gift and a complete triumph. The women in this novel create themselves and build paths toward a self-defined freedom. Llanos-Figueroa has given us a love letter that was lost among the many receipts and historical narratives told only by the victorious." — —Willie Perdomo, award-winning poet and author of Where Nickels Cost a Dime and The Crazy Bunch

“Pola's story had to be told and the only artist who could write it is Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa, who inhabits her characters so thoroughly that a reader could easily believe the writing of this book was an act of wizardry. A Woman of Endurance is a must-read."
— —Connie May Fowler, author of Before Women had Wings and A Million Fragile Bones

"A Woman of Endurance is a wonder, at once wrenching and tender, gripping and gorgeous, sweeping and profound. Llanos-Figueroa has written a ground-breaking contribution to the literature of enslavement, of the Americas, and of the possibilities for healing and becoming free.” — —Carolina de Robertis, author of The President and the Frog

“The horrific enslavement of more than 15 million Africans from West and Central Africa to build the Americas carried many untold stories. Pola's is one of those stories that insisted on being told.” — —Dr. Marta Moreno Vega, President/Founder of Creative Justice Initiative Inc. 

Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa’s A Woman of Endurance is a powerful novel, at times harrowing, but also full of love. A delicate balancing act of history and pain and grace and beauty. This is the Black Puerto Rican novel I have been waiting for my whole life.  — —Jaquira Díaz, author of Ordinary Girls 

“The restoration of [Pola’s] Yoruba spirituality and her deepened friendships are both touching and emotionally palpable. This harrowing story is hard to put down.”  — Publishers Weekly

“Llanos-Figueroa’s prose is lively, her characters vivid…a moving and engaging tale”
— Kirkus Reviews

“Llanos-Figueroa’s prose is at once merciless and elegantly descriptive.” — Booklist

From the Publisher

[A] compelling debut…Beautifully told by Llanos-Figueroa, this is an unforgettable saga of the magical beliefs binding one family for generations.” 

Booklist on Daughters of the Stone

Pola's story had to be told and the only artist who could write it is Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa, who inhabits her characters so thoroughly that a reader could easily believe the writing of this book was an act of wizardry. A Woman of Endurance is a must-read."

author of Before Women had Wings and Connie May Fowler

"A Woman of Endurance is a marvelous gift and a complete triumph. The women in this novel create themselves and build paths toward a self-defined freedom. Llanos-Figueroa has given us a love letter that was lost among the many receipts and historical narratives told only by the victorious."

Willie Perdomo

"A Woman of Endurance is a wonder, at once wrenching and tender, gripping and gorgeous, sweeping and profound. Llanos-Figueroa has written a ground-breaking contribution to the literature of enslavement, of the Americas, and of the possibilities for healing and becoming free.

Carolina de Robertis

The horrific enslavement of more than 15 million Africans from West and Central Africa to build the Americas carried many untold stories. Pola's is one of those stories that insisted on being told.

Dr. Marta Moreno Vega

"A Woman of Endurance is a new classic of Caribbean literature. With exquisite, patient, poetic prose, Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa illuminates the world of 19th-century Puerto Rican haciendas and the slavery on which they depended. By telling this story through the eyes of Pola, one of those slaves, Llanos-Figueroa has written the grand epic that Pola—and all the other forgotten women of endurance—richly deserve."

Cristina García

Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa's Daughters of the Stone sings as few novels can. It also tells us of a culture and nation that is underrepresented in our literature: Puerto Rico. And it does so with brilliant flourishes in a narrative both gripping and intimate. Conveying a wide sweep of history, as witnessed by several generations of women, the book has the warmth of autobiography while sustaining a firm and stately control of technique and language.

2010 PEN Literary Awards Program on Daughters of the Stone

11/01/2021

From Barenbaum, author of Barnes & Noble Discover pick A Bend in the Stars, Atomic Anna features a renowned nuclear scientist who is sleeping as Chernobyl melts down in 1986 and rips through time to meet her estranged daughter Molly in 1992, shot in the chest and begging her to go back and change the past (50,000-copy first printing). In Bird's Last Dance on the Starlight Pier, Evie Grace Devlin tries to leave vaudeville behind to become a nurse in 1930s Galveston, TX, but encounters setbacks and instead gets caught up in the shady world of dance marathons; following the Dublin International Literary Award long-listed Above the East China Sea (75,000-copy first printing). In Spur Award-winning Dallas's 1918 Denver-set Little Souls, sisters Helen and Lutie care for the daughter of a flu victim, and an abusive man's murder is covered up by leaving his body on the streets with all the other corpses to be collected (30,000-copy first printing). PEN/Robert W. Bingham finalist Llanos-Figueroa explores 19th-century Puerto Rican plantation society through Pola, A Woman of Endurance, captured in Africa and brought to Puerto Rico to bear babies subsequently taken from her and enslaved (40,000-copy first printing). First in a tetralogy, Scurati's internationally best-selling, Strega Award-winning M.—short for Mussolini—explores the rise of fascism in Italy (40,000-copy first printing). In The Good Left Undone, the New York Times best-selling Trigiana returns to Italy, where Matelda, the dying matriarch of a Tuscan artisan family, reveals her mother's love of the Scottish sea captain that fathered Matelda during World War II.

Library Journal

2022-03-02
An enslaved woman finds that human bonds sustain her even amid the cruelties of plantation life.

As a teenager in the early 19th century, Keera is kidnapped from her home in Yorubaland by slave traders. She is sold to the owner of Hacienda Paraiso, a plantation in Puerto Rico. He makes dual use of the women he enslaves: They work the sugar cane fields, and they are kept almost constantly pregnant, their babies taken away and sold right after birth. The novel opens with Keera, renamed Pola, making a desperate escape attempt after years of loss drive her close to madness. She ends up on Hacienda Las Mercedes, another sugar cane plantation but one with somewhat more humane owners—Pola is astonished to see enslaved children living there with their families. She’s been savagely beaten and gang-raped, but she recovers under the care of Rufina, a curandera, and two other older women who, although they are enslaved, have a degree of autonomy because of their talents for curing, cooking, and directing the plantation’s workshop that produces lucrative fine needlework and dresses. When she’s well, she becomes a protégé of all three, assisting Rufina in her healing arts, learning to cook in Pastora’s fine kitchen, and serving as a cutter and helper to Tia Josefa’s needleworkers. Llanos-Figueroa draws a detailed picture of social hierarchy on the plantation, not just that of owners and the enslaved, but the status system among the workers, based on the kind of work they do, which is in turn based on colorism—darker-skinned people are assigned to the grueling tasks like cutting cane, while the lighter-skinned (often mixed race) people work in the big house, serving tea and sewing ball gowns. Pola, who is dark, becomes an exception to the rule and the object of resentment. She also becomes the object of desire of a strong, stoic worker named Simon, but her hatred of men stands between them. Her heart does warm for Chachita, an orphan girl she finds living on her own in the woods. Chachita fills the empty spot in Pola’s heart left by her stolen babies, but helping the child puts them both at risk. Llanos-Figueroa’s prose is lively, her characters vivid. The last part of the book loses steam when it shifts into romance mode, but it’s a moving and engaging tale.

An absorbing and complex novel shines a light on chattel slavery in Puerto Rico.

Kirkus Reviews