Her Place in these Designs by Espaillat - Book Report/Review Example

Report on Her Place in these Designs by Espaillat and Dreaming in Cuban by Garcia The American poet Rhina P. Espaillat was born in 1932 and has resided in the United States of America since she was seven years old. She was an English teacher in New York City earlier until she retired to head the group of poets called the Powow River Poets. She writes in the English as well as the Spanish language, her bilingual talents allowing her to translate many other poems - such as those of Robert Frost’s - in Spanish. She has successfully written and published eight books, some of which have also won prizes. One of Espaillat’s books which are being taken into account over here is “Her Place in these Designs”. She is thought to have been quite a feminist and her poems give one confirmation regarding it. The title of the book focuses on how there is a woman who holds quite an important position in all that is happening, that things would not fall in place without her, her presence makes the things click. Then there is the front cover picture which is of a sculpture of a nude woman. This piece was, in fact, the result of her husband Alfred Moskowitz’s talent. The book consists of a collection of Espaillat’s poems; there are eighty five of these in total, more than half of which are sonnets, particularly based after the Shakespearean ones, which means that the common themes amongst these are of love, beauty, mortality and time. Almost all of her written poems have an even rhyme or meter or both. There are a few villanelles and there is also a poem in which the lines of every stanza conclude with the same words except that the order is different. She writes with such flow and flawlessness that a reader cannot help but be shocked and wonder how the end result was made possible. The lines do not look forced but seem to have just come out naturally on paper, every stanza fitting so well with each other. Her rhyming techniques are also great; she manages to pull off “beak” with “République” (Espaillat) that they sound just right with the rest of the content of the poem. She has a brilliant knowledge of the appropriate usage of metaphors and similes, which make the description of certain things that she is talking about in her poems quite vivid, making the meaning behind the poetry understandable to all. She just seems to have the knack to pick out the best possible words in just the proper order so it all fits together perfectly like a solved jigsaw puzzle. It also must be noted that the poet seems to have drawn inspiration for writing her poems from her life itself. Most of her poems talk of any happening of her life, particularly those related to her childhood when she lived with her complete family before she had to migrate to the United States of America due to the unstable political conditions. One such poem is the sonnet “Find Work” in which she pays homage to her grandmother and her advice regarding how to act in the face of a loss. Just in a few short lines she manages to inform the reader of some important personality quirk of her grandmother’s “spoke so little it was hard to bear so much composure, such a truce with time” (Espaillat) as well as takes one down her memory lane when she used to visit the old woman when she still lived in the Dominican and describes part of the house “But I recall her floors, scrubbed white as bone, Her dishes, and how painfully they shone” (Espaillat). Her manner of writing makes one aware that she still misses her homeland and even though she has adapted according to the life in the new country, she really wants to go back home too, maybe go back in time and get a chance to have a talk with her grandmother again. Another poem “Lift-off” has Espaillat talking of the journey from her first home in the Dominican to how she ended up migrating to the United States. There are mentions of how the travellers would miss home “Think, if you dare, / how appetite for home will starve that crew” (Espaillat). Then the part about remembering the “feast of salty air, / flavor of orchard autumn, breath of who” (Espaillat) gives a hint to what time of the year they made the journey to America and that it was through a ship. Then there is also the poem “Replay” which gives in an insight to one of the first few experiences that the author went through during the first year of her immigration to the States. She is playing at the “dusty courtyard of the inner city” (Espaillat) when she sees two boys with a jump rope and notices how they do not offer to play with another child just because they were “not supposed to play the Jews” (Espaillat) . At the tender age, the author did not know why there was the blatant discrimination against someone just because of the religion that they were born with. She also made the painful realization of how she had left every familiar thing behind and had no friend in the new city. Similarly, there are other such poems in the collection, which are all very well written. The adjectives used to describe a particular scene or object are quite creative and help give the reader quite a vibrant picture of the whole scenario. Even her emotions regarding the particular situation are said in a way which makes the reader completely feel and understand the writer’s spirits. Another Latino writer is Cristina Garcia who was born in 1958 in Cuba. But her family, too – just like Rhina P. Espaillat’s – fled to the New York City due to the situation in Cuba. It is over here that she attended university. She is also a journalist and used to work for the Time Magazine till she started writing a novel. She has four published books so far and also edits books that come under the genre of Latin American literature. The first novel ever written by Garcia is titled “Dreaming in Cuban” and revolves around three generations of a particular family, moving from Cuba to the United States of America. The book is mostly female orientated, the reader is told about the lives of the woman Celia del Pino, her daughters Lourdes and Felicia, as well as her granddaughter Pilar. Garcia mostly writes in third person, however, there are some parts which are narrated in the first person and some letters as well. The story is not revealed in a normal manner following a particular timeline, starting from Celia and ending with Pilar. Instead, it jumps from character to character, going back and forth as deems fit while telling the story to the readers. As one reads along in the book, one may not take too long to notice how utterly dysfunctional the family is. The problems start with Celia and it seems like she passes them off to her children with her genes and they to their children and so on. There is a whole bunch of physical separation which leads to angry spouses who then react accordingly. The females especially seem to be quite adept at losing their minds and then carrying out crazy plans like Felicia tries to kill off two of her three husbands. The mindsets of the members of the family do not match and even though it may seem like the family is finally straightening out for good, it all backfires. There are great communication problems resulting in more disaccord. The relationships between the mother and daughter in particular are mostly bitter, the daughters preferring their father instead like Pilar and Rufino. On the other hand, the sons are closer to their mother as can be seen from Ivanito and Felicia’s relationship. The political conditions of the country also have an impact on the lives of the members of this family. People had to flee Cuba because of the revolution and one of them was Pilar. This does not quite work out well as Cecilia stays behind and greatly misses her granddaughter who has left, but, unfortunately, it is not in her power to do anything. For Lourdes, moving to another place is an opportunity to forget about the miscarriage and try to push the recollection of her rape right at the back of her mind though the memories do return when she visits Cuba later. Pilar wants to be with Cecilia but she cannot be because of the exile even though she does try to run away once even if she failed at the attempt. She is quite clueless about her family background and the culture that they follow since her mother refuses to talk about them wanting all the bad memories to be locked away. Politics makes the family’s relationship even worse. Cuba’s exile leads to the family being physically torn apart. Celia supports the revolution whereas her husband prefers the American way of governing and this results to her becoming closer to Javier. Lourdes’ also opts for her father’s opinion because of which there forms a wall between her and Pilar. It is because of their beliefs that Celia stays behind in Cuba whilst the rest of her family migrates to America. Similarly, when Lourdes comes back home, she is neither close to her husband or their daughter. Things start to get better in the end though still not perfect. But the ending is depressing when Celia manages to commit suicide since no one knows to turn up to stop her from taking her own life (Garcia). Both Espaillat’s and Garcia’s pieces of Latino literature give the readers an insight as to how the conditions were during the time of revolution when Cuba was under exile and America was not at its top. Through bits and pieces they show how the situation then must have affected the people living there and how it must have led to their lives changing completely just like it did as shown in the poems and the novel. Bibliography Espaillat, Rhina P. Her Place in These Designs. Truman State University Press, 2008. Garcia, Cristina. Dreaming in Cuban. Ballantine Books, 1993. Read More