Q & A with Margarita Engle - Publishers Weekly
?I took a real false start because I was trying to write too generally on the time and events. Until I had down the story of Rosa “La Bayamesa” as a central part of it, it really didn’t work. But it was a matter of a couple of years.
I just immersed myself in everything I could find in Cuba, about all time periods in Cuba. I’ve spent my whole life doing this. I became very attached to the island during childhood visits, and was able to visit again later as an adult. Even though I wasn’t born and raised there—my mother’s from Cuba, I was born and raised in Los Angeles—I retain that very deep attachment.
I love reading everything I can find about Cuban history, and I love the research process. I got the oldest, most obscure references I could find through inter-library loan—which is a slow process—and then read them and went through the bibliography and worked my way back, farther and farther back, until I could find diaries. Diaries were where I could discover the emotions of the people who were experiencing that period of time, including details. There are details in diaries about what they ate for dinner and what they had to go through to find the food to make dinner, which you wouldn’t find in a standard history book, and that fascinates me.
Publishers WeeklyQ & A with Margarita EngleI went on to study botany and agronomy before picking up writing. And that's because I loved that farm so much. There were stories, adults gossiping, and things happening. But as my grandmother got older, she came to the United States and lived in New
Los Angeles Times BlogsChavez Ravine's blades of gloryHansen, a former high school baseball coach who went on to earn an agronomy degree from Texas A&M, walks the field during the coring process, twisting a shoe just slightly to feel for flaws and moisture. After decades in the business,