A Woman of Endurance

by Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa

Combining the haunting power of Toni Morrison’s Beloved with the evocative atmosphere of Phillippa Gregory’s A Respectable Trade, Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa’s groundbreaking novel illuminates a little discussed aspect of history—the Puerto Rican Atlantic Slave Trade—witnessed through the experiences of Pola, an African captive used as a breeder to bear more slaves.

Readers are invited to join Pola in her journey to healing. From the sadistic barbarity of her first experiences, she moves on to receive compassion and support from a revitalizing new community. Along the way, she learns to recognize and embrace the many faces of love—a mother’s love, a daughter’s love, a sister’s love, a love of community, and the self-love that she must recover before she can offer herself to another. It is ultimately, a novel of the triumph of the human spirit even under the most brutal of conditions.

A Woman of Endurance is the second novel in a series, preceded by Daughters of the Stone.

Daughters of the Stone:

A lyrical powerful novel about a family of Afro-Puerto Rican women spanning five generations, detailing their physical and spiritual journey from the Old World to the New.

It is the mid-1800s. Fela, taken from Africa, is working at her second sugar plantation in colonial Puerto Rico, where her mistress is only too happy to benefit from her impressive embroidery skills. But Fela has a secret. Before she and her husband were separated and sold into slavery, they performed a tribal ceremony in which they poured the essence of their unborn child into a very special stone. Fela keeps the stone with her, waiting for the chance to finish what she started. When the plantation owner approaches her, Fela sees a better opportunity for her child, and allows the man to act out his desire. Such is the beginning of a line of daughters connected by their intense love for one another, and the stories of a lost land. The stone becomes meaningful to each of the women, pulling them through times of crisis.

Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa shows great skill and warmth in the telling of this heartbreaking, inspirational story about mothers and daughters, and the ways in which they hurt and save one another.

Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa was born in Puerto Rico and raised in New York City. She is a product of the Puerto Rican communities on the island and in the South Bronx. She attended New York City public schools and received her academic degrees from SUNY at Buffalo and Queens College (CUNY). As a child she was sent to live with her grandparents in Puerto Rico where she was introduced to the culture of rural Puerto Rico, including the storytelling that came naturally to the women in her family, especially the elders. Much of her work is based on her experiences during this time.

The 2009 hardcover edition of Daughters of the Stone was listed as a 2010 Finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize. In 2021, she was awarded the Inaugural Letras Boricuas Fellowship from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Flamboyan Foundation’s Arts Fund aimed to enrich and sustain literary tradition in Puerto Rico and across the US Diaspora. Her second novel, A Woman of Endurance, (Amistad, 2022) is now available in paperback and has been translated into a Spanish language edition, Indómita, (Harper Español, 2022). She resides in the Bronx with her husband, photographer Jonathan Lessuck. To learn more, visit DahlmaLlanosFigueroa.com