Letters to My Mother

June 25, 2007
This powerful epistolary novel by an award-winning Cuban writer probes themes of racism and family. In letters to her beloved mother in heaven, the unnamed narrator ages from 10 to 15, and learns that the memory of being cherished can kindle the ability to love, forgive and accept love. The heroine is sent to live with her brutal grandmother, aunt and cousins after her mother's death, and they mock her, calling her "bembona" (meaning "thick lips"). Seeking solace, she dreams of her mother, "running from one end of the sky to the other pulling a kite made of clouds." The casual second-person voice disarmingly exposes sociological inequities. Gazing at her reflection, the narrator searches her face intently: "Guess what? I've discovered that my eyes are like yours -beautiful just as they are.... I don't like it when people say that blacks are "bembones".... If God exists, I'll bet he gets very angry when people criticize his creations." Later she reveals her maturation as a young woman. She begins to menstruate, overhears her aunt having sex, befriends a white boy distressed over his mother's prostitution, and discovers that her aunt's boyfriend has sexually abused her cousin. As her self-knowledge deepens, the narrator grows to love her cousin (with whom, she discovers, she shares the same, absent father), and even forgives her grandmother for past cruelty. This sheaf of small observations, smoothly translated, is itself a "piece of broken mirror," reflecting the toil, and flashing transcendence of the human experience. Ages 12-up. "(Apr.)" .