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Spotlight on Margarita Engle

Photograph (c) Shevaun Williams

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About the Author

Margarita Engle is the Cuban American author of many books including the verse novels Rima’s Rebellion; Your Heart, My SkyWith a Star in My HandThe Surrender Tree, a Newbery Honor winner; and The Lightning Dreamer. Her verse memoirs include Soaring Earth and Enchanted Air, which received the Pura Belpré Award, a Walter Dean Myers Award Honor, and was a finalist for the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction, among others. Her picture books include Drum Dream Girl; Dancing Hands; and The Flying Girl.

Spotlight on Rima's Rebellion

Rima's Rebellion

Courage in a Time of Tyranny

An inspiring coming-of-age story from award-winning author Margarita Engle about a girl falling in love for the first time while finding the courage to protest for women’s right to vote in 1920s Cuba.

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Headline: Q&A

Q: A lot of your books involve social issues and experiences such as immigration and women’s voting rights. Where do you draw your inspiration for these stories from, and what kinds of research do you need to do to depict these stories accurately?

I read everything I can find about every aspect of Cuban history. When something strikes me as surprising, I read more. In this case, there were personal connections that helped me become fascinated. My grandmother was the first woman in her town to seek a divorce after the old divorce law was modernized. My mother was born before women had the right to vote. Those felt like echoes of something that needed to be said. Imagine how recently women all over the world were forced to struggle for suffrage! The only way to gain voting rights was to convince the people in power—all men—that they should share some of that power. It must have been a daunting challenge, but women found the courage, and triumphed.

 

Q: Cuba is a frequent setting in your books. As a Cuban American author, what do you feel are some ways to best highlight its rich culture and history?

I have written about so many varied aspects of Cuban culture and history. For picture books I usually focus on inspiring biographical stories, music, food, and other subjects that younger children can understand. My young adult verse novels often include difficult topics, but I believe the musical language of poetry softens the blow, and I always end with hope. I have never written anything historical or fictional unless I saw hope somewhere within the true part of the story.

 

Q: Your latest book, Rima’s Rebellion, is about a young girl trying to find her place in the world while also experiencing first love. What about Rima reminds you of yourself when you were her age?

Rima is much more courageous than I was, although as a teenager I participated in all the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War protests of the 1960s.  Like Rima, I chose an all-male profession, and became the first woman agronomy professor at one of California’s Polytechnic universities. Also, I have always loved horses, and I’m fascinated by handmade books and blown-glass buttons that seem like unique artworks when compared to mass-produced products.

 

Q: What do you most like about telling stories through poetry, and what do you think you can convey differently through poetry verses prose?

I think of poetry as musical language. It is also concentrated, or distilled, in a way that can bring the reader right into the emotions and actions of a character. I write in first person and present tense so that there will be a sense of time travel. I use line breaks and stanzas to create a rhythm, vowel rhymes and internal rhymes to create soothing lyrics that suggest a song. I hope the white spaces on the page will look inviting to a young reader who might feel intimidated by a very crowded prose page. I hope teachers will ask students how the poems make them feel, instead of asking what the poems mean. That approach can give young people a lifelong place of refuge in poetry, instead of scaring them because they’re led to believe that poetry is “hard to understand.” I hope each reader will finish each of my books with a feeling of enjoyment and hope, just as they would if they were listening to music.

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