A Woman of Endurance

A 2010 finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, author Llanos-Figueroa pulls from her Puerto Rican heritage to bring listeners a story from a 19th-century plantation in Puerto Rico. Having grown up with her grandparents there, the author discovered the rich storytelling traditions of the women in her family. She continues this tradition with the story of Pola, a captured and enslaved woman from the west coast of Africa. Pola’s idyllic life ends abruptly and she suddenly exists only to work the sugarcane fields and be brutally raped. Her infants are taken from her immediately after birth. When this horrific existence becomes too much to bear, Pola escapes to end her enslavement, but she is caught, whipped, and sold to another plantation where conditions are relatively better. Actress Tracey Leigh narrates Pola’s tale and characters. Even while the narrative depicts horrors, the narration is calm and evenly paced.