A Woman of Endurance

This book absolutely wrecked me. It broke me into a billion pieces and two months later I'm still putting the pieces together. Two months later, I still can't find the words that will do this book justice.

I had to put this book down several times and walk away. There is so much raw pain and horror but there is love, friendship and kinship. There is distrust and new trust. There is hopelessness and there is hope. Through it all, there is resistance in every fiber of their being. These are my people.

Blood memory is real.

The only criticisms I have are of Bomba (I will forever be a hawk about it). Bomba simply was not used as a religious music. There are reasons behind it and no matter how much folks want to make it that way, it's just not factually correct. If handkerchiefs were tied to the drums, the different colors did not represent a certain deity. Plena didn't exist in the time the story was written. I know this is a work of fiction but it is written based on factual events or in a period of time that very real things took place. When there are so many few stories about Puerto Rico, I think it's important to be as factual as one can be with things that were real then and real now.