Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa Quotes

The babble that rose around them as they stood on the pier was deafening. It sounded like no speech Pola had ever heard, the words, jagged, grating sounds that attacked the ear.

Pola closed her eyes. She thought about all that had already been taken from her; her lovely fingers, her teeth, her body, her untouched womanhood, her laughter. But they hadn't taken everything. She clung to her faith, her soul, and her secret-the seed she knew was growing deep within her.

Remember the time before the hurting, for that's where the healing lives. Find the joy of the before and know you can find it again. You have a big heart and there are many paths to healing.

We all carry our nightmares in unspoken places. The details are different, but the outcome is the same. They want to steal our humanity, to ease the weight into their own souls. Don't you let them. Don't give them one piece of you they can't take. Don't you become the empty vessel they want to believe you are.

Your body is only a vessel. Your essence is inviolate. It is only when you give up your soul that you are lost.

Remember to open your heart. Learn to recognize gifts offered on your journey. (chapter 25 p325)

“When are you going to see that the only way we can carry our burdens is to share them?” (p310)

She knows for certain that the poisonous barb of humiliation has done much more damage than the lash ever did. (p277)

From the time she walked away from the tortured captives, she never has a moment that is not recorded in the book of their collective memory. Their wrath lives in the atmosphere like the charged air before a hurricane. (chapter 17, p230)

They take her in, questions hanging from their eyes. (chapter 16, p211)

She moved by rote, dragging her grief into the fields with her. (chapter 12 p149)

Working the knots has taught me something: to wait is not to waste time; to wait is to take time to see, to listen, to unfold and untangle what has come before. (chapter 10 p120)

This new woman is a mystery. To be black and a slave is to live wounded. To be black and a slave and be born in this place is to know nothing but darkness. To be a bozal, black, and a slave, who remembers the time before, is to carry a double wound, living in the darkness while constantly remembering the light. This warrior woman is wounded, lost, and still struggling against the dark. The light, not yet gone, flickers in her eyes. Interesting... (p28)

I couldn't write my stories without the constant presence of my ancestors who await me in my dreams and my meditations, whispering their stories and reminding me of what I have forgotten. This book is dedicated to them because their stories have lived for too long under the waters of the Caribbean, unrecognized and in imposed silence.
Let there be light to illuminate as-yet-to-be-told truths.