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By Sue Corbett. Special to The Herald. Posted on Wed, Oct.
02, 2002 in The Miami
Herald.
Despots in Haiti and Nicaragua. Dictators in Panama and Cuba. Desaparecidos
-- disappeared people -- in Argentina and Guatemala. Every political plague
known to man has afflicted the countries of the Western Hemisphere -- and its
children.
But where are those children's stories?
Mostly untold -- until now, when some long-overdue books have arrived.
Written by noted authors like the Haitian novelist Edwidge Danticat, Herald
columnist Ana Veciana-Suarez and the Dominican novelist and poet Julia Alvarez,
these poignant tales tell of childhoods trampled by political upheaval.
''There are so many powerful books about the Holocaust, beginning with Anne
Frank's diary, but when I searched for books about the things that have happened
in our hemisphere -- so many dictators, police states, genocide, the disappeared
people, the people forced into exile -- there was hardly anything,'' Alvarez
said. "It is like there was an erasure . . . almost nothing that explains
to American kids what it's like to have grown up under these conditions.''
Alvarez's book, a dramatic and heartbreaking novel titled Before We Were
Free, is set in the Dominican Republic before the fall of Gen. Rafael Trujillo.
Veciana-Suarez's Flight to Freedom and Danticat's book, Behind the Mountains,
are part of a new series of diary-style books about immigrants called First
Person Fiction -- meant not only for immigrant children, but for the classmates
they'll join when they arrive here.
''In places like Miami and New York, chances are the person next to you in
class is from somewhere else,'' said Danticat.
'THE NEW GIRL'
Alvarez herself was once the new girl in class, fleeing the Dominican
Republic in 1960 for New York. She sets Before We Were Free in her native land
in that same year and tells the story through 12-year-old Anita de la Torre,
whose cousins have left the country in a hurry. There are secret police parked
in the driveway of her family's compound. A favorite uncle is in hiding.
Trujillo is in power, but Anita overhears a conversation that leads her to
believe her father may be part of a plot to overthrow him. (Trujillo was
assassinated in 1961.)
The tension ratchets up, coming while Anita deals with the unsettling
aspects of adolescence -- her first crush, her first period, conflict with her
mother and sister.
Alvarez, who left the Dominican Republic when she was 10, is the author of
the autobiographical novel How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, about a
Dominican family's adjustment to life in New York, and In the Time of
Butterflies, a novel about the real-life sisters martyred during the Trujillo
regime. She dedicates Before We Were Free "to those who stayed.''
''It isn't my story, but it could have been,'' Alvarez said. "All of us
who are immigrants have this shadow story behind us.''
TWO WORLDS
Like Anita, 13-year-old Yara Garcia, the narrator of Flight to Freedom, is
caught between two worlds and a little frightened of both. Veciana-Suarez,
author of two books for adults, combined family lore with autobiography in
telling Yara's tale -- a story that begins in rural Cuba with Yara forcibly
enrolled in La Escuela de Campo, the backbreaking ''farm school'' where children
worked in the fields from sunup to sundown.
''I personally have very little memory of Cuba, but I wanted to use the
stories I had heard from my cousins and relatives,'' said Veciana-Suarez, who
left Cuba at age 5. "The things that happen in the book did happen to
people I talked to. It's all based on fact.''
Once Yara arrives in Miami, the tension hardly eases.
''It is so awful to be a stranger, to not recognize any hallway or classroom
or teacher. It is even worse not to understand what others are saying to you,''
Yara writes in her diary.
At home, Yara's older sister struggles with her parents' inconsistent
embrace of American customs, a typical immigrant dilemma Yara sees this way: "Just
because my parents eat chocolate chip cookies doesn't mean they will allow
Ileana to attend a party without a chaperon.''
FRETS ABOUT DAD
Like Anita, Yara is also forced to worry about her father, who she knows is
involved in some sort of para-military training.
Veciana-Suarez's father, Antonio Veciana, was not only one of the original
balseros, he was a founding member of Alpha 66, the militant anti-Castro group.
Yara's father refuses to make plans for holidays because he is sure the
family will have returned to Cuba by then. When the talk turns to weddings one
night, he tells Yara, ''I suppose you will want to get married in Los
Pasionistas,'' a beautiful cathedral in Havana. Actually, Yara was thinking the
church in her Miami neighborhood would be nice.
Both Veciana-Suarez and Danticat were approached by the editor of the First
Person Fiction line, wondering if they'd be interested in writing something for
young readers. Danticat said she was ''happy to sign on,'' particularly because
the editor, Scholastic's Amy Griffin, had been involved with Scholastic's
enormously popular ''Dear America'' books, historical fiction told in diary
format.
HISTORY LESSONS
''I had given those books to the kids in my life,'' Danticat said. "It's
a great way of learning history in a fun way.''
Danticat grew up in Haiti, immigrating to Brooklyn when she was 12. Behind
the Mountains chronicles a young girl's journey from violence in Port-au-Prince
to a bittersweet reunion with her father in Brooklyn.
Growing up in Haiti, Danticat read the Madeline picture books and ''very
serious French literature.'' Once she arrived in New York, she read Nancy Drew.
''But no matter what culture you're from, you're looking for some kind of
connection,'' she said. "You're looking for a mirror. I didn't see myself
in any of the books I read at that age.''
In Behind the Mountains, 13-year-old Celiane Esperance is missing her
father, who has left their home in the Haitian hills five years earlier to earn
a living in New York. He sends money each month, but permission for the family
to leave has not been granted.
BOMB INJURES MOM
When Celiane, her mother and brother travel in Haiti to visit an aunt, they
are victims of election season violence -- a pipe bomb strikes their bus,
seriously injuring Celiane's mother. Afterward, they feel increasing pressure to
get to New York. Once they do arrive, Celiane experiences some of the same
anguish Yara did in her story, set in Miami, 40 years earlier.
Authors often refuse to have expectations about what readers will take from
their books, but Danticat doesn't hesitate when it comes to Behind the
Mountains.
''I hope they get a glimpse of what it's like for a young person to come
here and start over,'' she said, "and an idea of what things were like
where they came from.''
LOOKING BACK
Veciana-Suarez says writing the book was a learning experience for her --
having to think more about her own heritage and get specifics about a past she
doesn't fully remember.
'When I was writing, I asked my mom, 'What restaurants would we have gone to
in the mid-60s?' '' Veciana-Suarez recalled. 'She said, 'We didn't go to
restaurants. We didn't have any money.' I was too young to realize how tough it
was for them.'' | 
