“Do I have to admit that I'm half Cuban and half American,or should I go even further, and explainthat Dad's parents were born in the Ukraine,part of Soviet Russia?Or am I just entirely American,all the fractions left behindby immigration from faraway nations?”
Margarita Engle“If we knew how to find the lost, we would know how to rediscover the parts of our mindsleft behindin battle.”
Margarita Engle, The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom“There is no place more lonelyThan a rich man's home.”
Margarita Engle, The Firefly Letters“Night simply drapes itself over the dayAs if someone had lowered a curtain.The sky glitters and moves,Filled with shooting stars and fireflies.”
Margarita Engle, The Firefly Letters“I would have run awayInto the forestTo live in a nestMade of dreamsAnd green leaves”
Margarita Engle, The Firefly Letters“I don't understand the whole thrilling verse, but I love the way poetry turns ordinary words into winged things that rise up and soar!”
Margarita Engle, The Wild Book“Marriage without love is just one more twisted form of slavery.”
Margarita Engle, The Lightning Dreamer: Cuba's Greatest Abolitionist“I can't understand why dark northern soldiers and light ones are seperated into different brigades. The dead are all buried together in hasty mass graves, bones touching.”
Margarita Engle, The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom“Can it be true that freedom only exists when it is a treasure, shared by all?”
Margarita Engle, The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom“Hatred must be a hard thing to learn.”
Margarita Engle, The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom“The child tells me her grandmothershowed her how to cure sadness by sucking the juice of an orange, while standing on a beach.Toss the peels onto a wave.Watch the sadness float away.”
Margarita Engle, The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom