The Lightning Dreamer (16 page)

Can a woman ever write
the true thoughts of a man?
Will I be able to show Sab's
soul on paper?
Can a free person
really understand one whose dreams
must fly up and soar
high above the depths
of slavery?

 

Is my imagination enough,
or do I need to add the ways
in which I myself
have felt enslaved?

 

I must be honest, writing myself
into the story, revealing
all my secrets.

Manuel and I have bought
passage on a ship to Spain,
with a stop in France.
He warns me that Mamá
and our stepfather will be
on the same ship, but I know
that I can avoid their tricks.
I am strong.

 

People in small boats call out,
then turn and rhythmically row
back to shore. Sailors sing,
while I watch the sea.

 

With my face to the wind,
I dream of Sab, both the real man
and my novel.

 

This will not be a book
about the whips and chains
of slavery. It will simply be
a gentle
tale of love.

 

If the story is seen
as proof that human souls
are transparent and free
of all color, class, and gender,
then I will know
that I have succeeded
in showing how people
are all equal
and should always
be equally
free.

The novel will have to wait—
this blue sea fills my mind
with poetry.

 

When a hurricane overtakes
the ship, Manuel and Mamá
flee to their cabins, but I perch
on deck
in a double tempest.

 

I live at the center of two storms,
one of wind, the other a hurricane
of the spirit, a storm of emotions
that helps me fight back
with strong words
whenever life is unfair
and I feel
powerless.

Passage across the sea
is long and exhausting,
but I feel so exhilarated!
We've arrived at the French
river port of Bordeaux,
and I've managed to ignore
my mother's efforts to talk
about another engagement.

 

Eager to write about Sab,
I sit at a little desk in a small room
in a hotel called
Paz
—“Peace.”

 

I have a feather pen,
and a window
with a view of sky.

 

What more do I need?
I don't know how my book
will end.

 

All I know is that love
is not the modern invention
of rebellious young girls.

 

Love is ancient.
A legend.
The truth.

The Lightning Dreamer
is historical fiction. I have tried to present realistic portraits of Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda and her family, but I have also taken great liberties, imagining many details.

 

Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda (1814–1873):

 

Born in Puerto Príncipe (now Camagüey), Cuba, Avellaneda was variously known by her childhood nickname Tula, the pen name
La Peregrina
(“The Wanderer”), and
La Avellaneda
. Because her mother regarded reading and writing as unladylike, young Tula wrote stories about giants and vampires in secret, then burned them.

Sab, Carlota, the old storyteller, and the greedy gentleman are actually fictional characters from Avellaneda's groundbreaking abolitionist novel,
Sab.
Biographers believe these characters were inspired by real people Avellaneda met at the age of fifteen, when she was sent to a country estate “to rest” after refusing an arranged marriage. I have imagined Avellaneda's encounters with her own fictional characters, borrowing many aspects from
Sab
and inventing others.

During her lifetime, Avellaneda was celebrated as one of the world's most prominent female writers. Known primarily as a poet and playwright, she chose lyrical prose for her boldest work. Written in the romantic, melodramatic style of the time,
Sab
was one of the world's first abolitionist novels and the earliest one written in Spanish.
Sab
is also the only known Latin American abolitionist novel that combines proemancipation views with feminist themes. Banned in Cuba,
Sab
was published in Spain in 1841, eleven years before the American publication of
Uncle Tom's Cabin
by Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Avellaneda began writing
Sab
when she was only twenty-two, at the Hotel de la Paz (Hotel of Peace) in Bordeaux, France. The interracial love story in
Sab
was considered so scandalous that numerous copies were purchased and destroyed by Avellaneda's relatives in Spain. Despite their efforts to suppress the book, Avellaneda's brother, Manuel, remained loyal and brave, smuggling her banned books between Spain and Cuba.

Sab
became influential throughout Europe and the Americas, inspiring compassion for slaves and for young girls forced to marry strangers. Avellaneda not only believed that slaves should be freed and women should choose their own husbands; she was bold enough to portray interracial marriage and voluntary marriage as completely normal. She felt that regardless of ancestry, all Cubans belonged to a rich cultural blend of Spanish, African, and indigenous Ciboney-Taíno Indian origins. Her conviction that all should be equally proud of every ethnic component of a shared society was an idea so original and courageous that it helped readers question the way they viewed slavery, interracial marriage, and the broader issue of voluntary marriage. By telling a simple love story, Avellaneda conveyed her dream of universal dignity, freedom, and equal rights for men and women of all races.

Avellaneda spent most of her adult life in Spain, where her writing often focused on marriages arranged for profit, a tradition she viewed as the marketing of teenage girls. With essays such as
“Capacidad de las mujeres para el gobierno”
(Capacity of women for government), she confirmed her role as one of the world's earliest and most outspoken feminist authors.

While Avellaneda achieved remarkable literary success, her personal life was plagued by tragedy. After refusing two potentially profitable arranged marriages, she was shunned and ridiculed by disappointed relatives. Later, she fell in love with a man who refused to marry her because she was poor and another who abandoned her after she gave birth out of wedlock. She eventually married twice, but her first husband died of illness and the second was stabbed during a duel with a heckler who had tossed a cat onto the stage during a performance of one of her controversial plays.

The greatest disappointment of Avellaneda's professional life was her exclusion from the all-male Royal Spanish Academy. Without membership, she could not receive the financial benefits granted to male writers. She satirized her rejection as the “Bearded Academy”‘s policy of discrimination against anyone who could not shave.

In 1859, Avellaneda returned to Cuba, where she established a literary magazine for women. In 1864, on her way back to Spain, she visited Niagara Falls in memory of José María Heredia, whose poetry and abolitionist views had inspired her.

During her lifetime, Avellaneda's ideas were considered shocking, but her clear vision of racial and gender equality was eventually accepted. Cuban slaves were emancipated; public employment and public schools were integrated. Interracial marriage became common throughout the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, now home to one of the world's most culturally mixed populations. The archaic custom of forcing young girls into financially motivated arrangements was gradually replaced by voluntary marriages based on love.

 

José María Heredia (1803–1839):

 

Heredia
¹
is regarded as Avellaneda's mentor, even though they never met. As Cuba's first Romantic era poet, Heredia paired his abolitionist views with the goal of independence from colonial Spain. He was still a teenager when he became a founder of
Los caballeros racionales
(“The Rational Gentlemen”), a nonviolent branch of the secret society called
Los Soles y Rayos de Bolívar
(“The Suns and Rays of Bolívar”). Heredia was forced into exile after he was betrayed by a spy. He escaped from Cuba disguised as a sailor, lived in Boston, wrote poetry at Niagara Falls, taught Spanish in New York, and became a diplomat and judge in Mexico. Known as
El homero Cubano
(“The Cuban Homer”) or
El cantordel Niágara
(“The Singer of Niagara”), Heredia inspired later generations of Cuban abolitionists and independence advocates.

The following excerpt from the poem
“A Emilia”
(“To Emilia”) is representative of Heredia's work:

 

. . . bajo el hermoso desnublado cielo
no pude resolverme a ser esclavo,
ni consentir que todo en la natura
fuese noble y feliz, menos el hombre.
. . . under the beautiful clear sky
I could not accept slavery,
nor regard all of nature
as noble and happy, except man.

P
ROSE
:

 

Excerpts from the abolitionist novel
Sab
:

 

¿Quién se acordará de tu color al verte amar tanto y sufrir tanto?

 

Who will remember your color when they see how greatly you love and suffer?

 

Los hombres dirán que yo he sido infeliz por mi culpa; porque he soñado los bienes que no estaban en mi esfera, porque he querido mirar al sol, como el águila . . . ¿Es culpa mía si Dios me ha dotado de un corazón y de un alma?