The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba’s Struggle for Freedom

Bibliography:

Engle, Margarita. 2008. The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba’s Struggle for Freedom. New York: Henry Holt. ISBN: 0805086749.

Summary:

In 1850, Rosa was a young slave in Cuba, learning how to heal using plants and natural remedies. In 1868, she was freed along with other slaves as a declaration of independence from Spain. Yet she was not really free, as this began the first of three wars. For the next 30 years, Rosa and other refugees hid in the jungle, escaping from the Spanish soldiers. With a price on her head, Rosa and her husband nursed many wounded people back to health, including some of their enemies. They took in those who escaped from the brutal “reconcentration camps,” and they survived to see Cuba free from Spain but purchased by the United States.

Analysis:

This is a verse novel where the poems are in the first-person and narrated by various characters: Rosa, her husband Jose, a young refugee Sylvia, an enemy slavehunter, and others. The free verse poems are full of beautiful language and haunting imagery, and they tell the story well. Often concise, the poems convey powerful messages about war, freedom, courage, hardship, compassion, and much more. Because of the book’s length and the violence present in some poems, this is a story for older readers. Rosa the healer and most of the other characters were real people, though some of the details are fictionalized. The author’s great-grandparents were refugees in Cuba during these events, bringing additional meaning to the story.

Reviews/Awards:

Pura Belpre Author Award
Newbery Honor Award

“Engle’s new book is written in clear, short lines of stirring free verse. This time she draws on her own Cuban American roots, including stories from her grandmother, to describe those who fought in the nineteenth-century Cuban struggle for independence. At the center is Rosa, a traditional healer, who nurses runaway slaves and deserters in caves and other secret hideaways.”
Booklist, starred review

“Often, popular knowledge of Cuba begins and ends with late-20th-century textbook fare: the Cuban Revolution, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Fidel Castro. The Surrender Tree, however, transports readers to another, though no less tumultuous, era. Spanning the years 1850–1899, Engle's poems construct a narrative woven around the nation's Wars for Independence.”
School Library Journal

Connections:
*Pair this book with Engle’s The Poet Slave of Cuba.