A Woman of Endurance
by Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa

Pola, an enslaved African woman on a sugar cane plantation in 19th century Puerto Rico, is beaten and repeatedly raped. After being forced into the inhumane world of slave breeding, her babies are taken from her at birth. As the incessant brutality inflicted on her continues, Pola loses the faith that has guided her early life and becomes distrusting, and embittered. The dehumanizing violence in her life almost destroys her.

After a particularly vicious beating and following an attempted escape, she awakens on a new plantation, Las Mercedes. The narrative lens follows her into a multifaceted, diverse, nuanced, complex and oftentimes supportive world of the enslaved. Here, Pola 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 finally the self-love that she must experience before she can offer herself to another. A Woman of Endurance is not a tale of defeat but rather one of survival, regeneration, and reclamation of common humanity. It illuminates the strength and endurance of enslaved people who, though held captive, retain the full essence, both good and bad, of the human condition.

Dahlma Llanos Figueroa’s A Woman of Endurance evokes the intense spirit of those enslaved human beings who despite inhumane treatment are impacted by hatred and love, barbarity and humanism, alienation and community, family, motherhood, faith and most importantly, the search for a sense of self-worth Ultimately, it is a novel of healing, and the triumph of the human spirit under the most brutal of circumstances.