Hurricane Dancers (6 page)

Authors: Margarita Engle

BOOK: Hurricane Dancers

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Many English words have TaÃno roots. Examples include
barbecue, barracuda, canoe, cassava, guava, hammock, hurricane, iguana, manatee, papaya, savannah,
and
tobacco
. Spanish words with TaÃno origins include
ajÃ
(chile pepper),
guacamayo
(macaw),
maÃz
(corn),
manÃ
(peanuts),
maracas
(rattles), and
yuca
(manioc). Cuba's distinctive variety of Spanish is even more widely enriched by TaÃno terms, such as
bohÃo
(thatched house),
cocuyo
(firefly),
guagua
(transportation),
guajiro
(farmer),
guateque
(feast), and
manigua
(jungle).

Columbus gave Cuba the Spanish name Juana. Later attempts to give the largest Caribbean island a colonial name included Fernandina, Santiago, and Ave MarÃa. Only the original TaÃno name has survived into modern times. One speculative translation is
cu
(friend) combined with
ba
(big). Other indigenous place names include Bahamas, BorinquÃ©n (Puerto Rico), GuantÃ¡namo, Haiti, Havana, Jamaica, and Quisqueya (the Dominican Republic).

Literature

For five centuries, the love story of CaucubÃº and NaridÃ³ has been told and retold by Cuban authors, with various endings and different interpretations of the young couple's names. My translations of CaucubÃº as “Brave Earth,” and NaridÃ³ as “River Being,” are based on TaÃno lexicons in modern references.

It is tempting to associate Brave Earth with the “brave new world” speech of Miranda in act 5, scene 1, of William Shakespeare's marvelous play
The Tempest
. Scholars have never been able to verify all the British playwright's sources of inspiration. It is intriguing to imagine him in a smoky inn on a foggy night, listening to some wandering seafarer's tale of hurricanes, castaways, caves, masked dancers, island spirits, forbidden love, and a girl named Brave Earth.

REFERENCES

Arciniegas, GermÃ¡n.
Caribbean Sea of the New World.
Translated by Harriet de OnÃs. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1954.

Horwitz, Tony.
A Voyage Long and Strange.
New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2008.

Keegan, William F., and Lisabeth A. Carlson.
Talking TaÃno: Caribbean Natural History from a Native Perspective.
Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2008.

Las Casas, BartolomÃ© de.
Historia de las Indias.
Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1957.

PanÃ©, Fray RamÃ³n.
An Account of the Antiquities of the Indians.
Durham: Duke University Press, 1999.

Rouse, Irving.
The Tainos: Rise and Decline of the People Who Greeted Columbus.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.

Sauer, Carl Ortwin
. The Early Spanish Main.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966.

Tabio, Ernesto E., and Estrella Rey.
Prehistoria de Cuba.
La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1985.

Wright, Irene Aloha.
The Early History of Cuba, 1492â1586.
New York: Macmillan, 1916.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank God for the quiet times between storms.

As always, I am grateful to Curtis, Victor, Nicole, and the rest of my family.

Special thanks to Pamela S. Turner, Martha Moreira Yunis, the Cuban DNA Project, and the Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution.

For helping me rescue this manuscript from numerous shipwrecked drafts, I am profoundly grateful to my wonderful editor, Reka Simonsen. I am also deeply indebted to Tim Jones, Laura Godwin, Deirdre Jacobson, Rich Deas, Liz Herzog, Sarah Dotts Barley, and the entire Holt/Macmillan team.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Margarita Engle
is a Cuban American poet, novelist, and journalist whose work has been published in many countries. She is the author of young adult nonfiction books and novels in verse including
The Surrender Tree,
a Newbery Honor Book,
The Poet Slave of Cuba,
Hurricane Dancers,
The Firefly Letters,
and
Tropical Secrets.
She lives in northern California. You can sign up for email updates
here
.

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CONTENTS

Title Page

Dedication

Hurricane Dancers (6 page)

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