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.
Author
Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa was born in Puerto Rico and raised in New York City. She is a product of the Puerto Rican communities on the island and in the South Bronx. She attended the New York City public school system and received her academic degrees from the State University of New York at Buffalo and Queens College-City University of New York. As a child she was sent to live with her grandparents in Puerto Rico where she was introduced to the culture of rural Puerto Rico, including the storytelling that came naturally to the women in her family, especially the older women. Much of her work is based on her experiences during this time. Dahlma taught creative writing and language and literature in the New York City public school system before becoming a young-adult librarian. She has also taught creative writing to teenagers, adults, and senior citizens throughout New York while honing her own skills as a fiction writer and memoirist. The 2009 hardcover edition of Daughters of the Stone was listed as a 2010 Finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize. In February, 2019 Dahlma self-published the paperback edition of Daughters of the Stone which won the 16th Annual National Indie Excellence® Awards for Multicultural Fiction in 2020. In 2021, she was awarded the NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship for Fiction. Dahlma's short stories appear in several anthologies, including: Bronx Memoir Project, Latina Authors and Their Muses, Chicken Soup for the Latino Soul, Breaking Ground: Anthology of Puerto Rican Women Writers in New York 1980-2012, and Growing Up Girl. Dahlma's work also appears in various literary magazines such as the Afro-Hispanic Review and Kweli Journal. English and Spanish language editions of Dahlma's second novel, A Woman of Endurance, are scheduled to be published in March 2022 by Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins. Since her retirement, Dahlma continues to dedicate herself to her writing, speaking engagements, panels, and workshops. She resides in the Bronx with her husband, photographer Jonathan Lessuck.
