Feminist and Abolitionist: The Story of Emilia Casanova

by Virginia Sánchez-Korrol

Overview

This fictional biography for young adults sheds light on an almost unknown feminist, revolutionary and abolitionist.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611926200
Publisher:	Arte Publico Press
Publication date:	04/30/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	267 KB
Age Range:	15 Years

About the Author

Virginia Sánchez-Korrol is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. She is the author of several works including Feminist and Abolitionist: The Story of Emilia Casanova (2013) and From Colonia to Community: The History of Puerto Ricans in New York City (1994). Chair of the Library and Archives Advisory Group of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College, Sánchez-Korrol writes a blog about Puerto Ricans and Latinas in the United States for The Huffington Post.

Editorial Reviews

12/01/2013
Gr 9 Up—This fictional account of the 19th-century Cuban abolitionist takes a fascinating yet little-known woman and bogs it down with overwrought descriptions and unexciting characterizations. Casanova is born to an aristocratic family originally from the Canary Islands; due to her father's wealth in sugar-cane plantations, she spends her childhood in great comfort. A supporter of Cuban independence, she and, by association, her family are ostracized by their peers. Wishing to remove her from the volatile atmosphere, despite sharing many sympathies, Emilia's parents send her to school in New York. The young woman is recruited to deliver revolutionary and illegal (under Spanish rule) materials to Havana residents. After her brother is forced to hide from the Spanish soldiers due to his own revolutionary activity, Emilia's entire family joins her in New York. Marriage and motherhood soon follow, along with a deepening involvement with Cuba's liberation and abolition of slavery. The formal and stilted narrative keeps readers at a distance. Descriptions of the complex operations of the plantations, Emilia's education, the differences in expectations for well-born boys and girls in her community, and the cultural makeup of her town are plentiful and intriguing, even though they tend to slow the plot to a crawl. Purchase if demand for Cuban historical fiction is high; otherwise, direct readers to Margarita Engle's books.—Jennifer Schultz, Fauquier County Public Library, Warrenton, VA

School Library Journal

Despite the publisher's description of this as a biography, it is rather a finely detailed historical novel that sticks closely to the facts of this little-known Latin American activist. Born into a rich, slaveholding Cuban family, Emilia is filled with zeal for freedom from an early age. She refuses to submit to the silent, submissive role of a woman of her time and station, rebelling against her conservative father by championing suffrage for slaves and Cuban independence from Spain. When asked while abroad to deliver contraband papers to her native island home, Emilia sees her chance to be in the thick of the rebellion against Spanish authority. Even though she would be branded a traitor and endanger her family if caught, she fearlessly accepts and carries out her mission. In the fictionalized first-person voice of her subject, Sánchez Korrol chronicles this and Casanova's many other accomplishments: writing political essays (the first Cuban woman to do so), addressing the United States Congress as a representative of Cuban women fighting for independence, and attempting to internationalize the Cuba Libre movement. Unfortunately, although Casanova is a fascinating character, the author's scholarly approach burdens the story with so much historical detail that the narrative fails to compel. Flawed as it is, readers may still find this portrait of the little-known, remarkable revolutionary of interest. (Historical fiction. 13 & up)

Kirkus Reviews