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Join us for a special event in partnership with LITina Book Club and author Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa.
This event will take place in-person, following all current Covid-19 safety regulations. Mask required.
LITinabookclub, established in 2020, is a book club hosted by Erica Bernal and a space for all readers to connect with Latinx literature and participate in discussions about books, authors, and culture. Monthly meetings are held on Instagram live where authors may join the discussion, and active reader participation is encouraged (whether live or written in comments). The goal of the book club is to promote literacy, reading for leisure, and a sense of community. (Itâs also a really fun time.)
This first-ever in-person book club event will host author Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa to discuss her bestselling novel, Daughters of the Stoneâa 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.
Buy the book here.
Photograph by Orlando Gonzalez
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 the New York City public school system and received her academic degrees from the State University of New York at Buffalo and Queens CollegeâCity University of New York. 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 older women. Much of her work is based on her experiences during this time. Dahlma taught creative writing and language and literature in the New York City public school system before becoming a young-adult librarian. She has also taught creative writing to teenagers, adults, and senior citizens throughout New York while honing her own skills as a fiction writer and memoirist.
Dahlma is a PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize 2010 Finalist, 2020 National Indie Excellence Multicultural Fiction Award Winner, and 2021 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Fiction.
Learn more at https://www.dahlmallanosfigueroa.com/
About Daughters of the Stone
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.
Mati, a powerful healer and noted craftswoman, is grounded in a life that is disappearing in a quickly changing world.
Concha, unsure of her place, doesnât realize the price she will pay for rejecting her past.
Elena, modern and educated, tries to navigate between two cultures, moving to New York, where she struggles to keep her family together.
Carisa turns to the past for wisdom and strength when her life in New York falls apart.
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.
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