Soaring Earth: A Companion Memoir to Enchanted Air
4/5
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About this ebook
Margarita Engle’s childhood straddled two worlds: the lush, welcoming island of Cuba and the lonely, dream-soaked reality of Los Angeles. But the revolution has transformed Cuba into a mystery of impossibility, no longer reachable in real life. Margarita longs to travel the world, yet before she can become independent, she’ll have to start high school.
Then the shock waves of war reach America, rippling Margarita’s plans in their wake. Cast into uncertainty, she must grapple with the philosophies of peace, civil rights, freedom of expression, and environmental protection. Despite overwhelming circumstances, she finds solace and empowerment through her education. Amid the challenges of adolescence and a world steeped in conflict, Margarita finds hope beyond the struggle, and love in the most unexpected places.
Margarita Engle
Margarita Engle is the Cuban American author of many books including the verse novels Rima’s Rebellion; Your Heart, My Sky; With a Star in My Hand; The Surrender Tree, a Newbery Honor winner; and The Lightning Dreamer. Her verse memoirs include Soaring Earth and Enchanted Air, which received the Pura Belpré Award, a Walter Dean Myers Award Honor, and was a finalist for the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction, among others. Her picture books include Drum Dream Girl, Dancing Hands, and The Flying Girl. Visit her at MargaritaEngle.com.
Read more from Margarita Engle
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Reviews for Soaring Earth
4 ratings1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This companion to Enchanted Air is also told as a beautiful, poetic memoir, more for a teenager than for the younger audience in the earlier book. I loved this, but not quite as much as the first.
Book preview
Soaring Earth - Margarita Engle
Wide Air
1966–1968
TRAVEL DREAMS
Destinations sweep over me
from colors in dazzling photos,
a warm, inviting quality seen only in the light
of tropical air.
I’ll save piles of babysitting money
and make my escape from Los Angeles.
No more smog, just a rain forest, peaceful
beneath sky so intense that each breath
must be enchanted like Cuba’s aire,
floating birdlike and wild above jungles
and farms, green between two
shades of blue,
sea and heaven,
half wave-washed memory,
half soaring daydream.
Where should I travel?
Peru, Borneo, India?
The brightness of photos is dimmed
only by my age, too young for solitary
journeys, too old for imaginary
horse-friends.
REALITY
India sounds perfect,
but my travel dreams
have to wait.
High school starts right after
my fourteenth birthday, the halls
a
whirlwind
of
strangers . . .
but I’m pretty good at starting over
because I have plenty of practice saying goodbye
to the past, so after school, I sit on a rigid wall
wishing for the future, waiting to be older,
my current age a hybrid
half riddle,
half puzzle.
THE GEOGRAPHY OF A WALL
The wall is a barrier that separates
John Marshall High School from the street,
a dry imitation of my seawall memory,
that coral stone Malecón in Havana.
This wall is designed to separate waves of
raucous students
from dangerous riptides
of traffic.
Or is it just meant to keep rich kids and regular ones
apart? The wealthy have cars that zoom away
while the rest of us wait for a bus or a parent,
the wall dividing cascades of us into tide pools,
settled groups of relaxed kids who met in kindergarten,
and seaweed-like strays, those of us who transferred
from out of the district, and arrived knowing
no one.
Cool kids.
Loners.
Stoners.
Will I ever wash ashore in a swirling
puddle
of friendship?
With my wide Cuban hips
and frizzy black hair,
I’ll never belong
with blond surfers
or elegant socials,
so I just have to hope
that sooner or later,
other drifting
bookworms
will find me.
ARMY M.
It doesn’t take too many weeks on the wall
for one of the short-haired, military ROTC boys
to start flirting with me.
I’m Cuban American.
He’s Mexican American.
Close enough.
But his army hair worries me.
How long will it be until he ends up in Vietnam,
killing
dying
or both?
I belong to a family of pacifists, always marching
to protest, because the Cold War has already sliced
our familia in half, so just imagine how much worse
it must be in southeast Asia, where US bombs
and chemical napalm flames
burn villagers alive
on the news
every night.
DATING
No war can last forever, so sooner or later
M.’s army world and my peace dove wishes
will surely meet in the middle.
Won’t they?
Suddenly my plan to spend weekends babysitting
in order to save money for tropical expeditions
no longer seems as urgent as Friday nights
cruising around in a low-rider car,
my fourteen-year-old freshman mind
so imperfectly matched
with an almost-eighteen senior,
mi novio,
my boyfriend.
His older pals/carnales in the backseat
have already dropped out of school,
joined the army, fought in Vietnam,
and returned with tattoos
and all sorts of other
scars.
A WHIRLWIND OF MONTHS
Time
t
w
i
s
t
s
and
tangles,
spinning me
far away
from unrealistic
travel dreams.
Classwork.
Homework.
Research papers.
Friday nights cruising.
Saturday mornings at the Arroyo Seco Library
followed by babysitting jobs, my money stashed
and slowly growing toward some remote corner
of Bengal or Kashmir.
BOOKWORM
I can’t stop, even though M.’s