Wings in the Wild by Margarita Engle

Author:Margarita Engle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Published: 2023-04-18T00:00:00+00:00

Calendar Dariel

I’m relaxed here, until my parents

start calling to nag me about college—they send

links to applications for Juilliard, Berklee, Yale,

USC, the New England Conservatory of Music,

the Royal Academy in London, and others

in France, Norway, Argentina, Chile…

They don’t believe

that I might study trees

instead of symphonies.

They don’t know about you

or my new schedule, a blank

page with nothing but kisses

and bird songs.

Art Flames Soleida

Mireya asks me to stay and listen

when your abuelo interviews her

for his book about los cubanos

de Costa Rica.

She calls herself a tica cubana,

laughing because the nickname

costarricenses use for themselves

comes from the way they end words

by saying “chiquitico”

instead of “chiquitito,” but that’s

something islanders do too,

as if we’re related

by linguistics.

Mireya’s story is disturbing.

She escaped from the island

after her paintings were burned

in a bonfire

because she was a student

of Tomás Sánchez, whose style

is detailed rain forest landscapes

so green and leafy that they look real.

Far below the canopy

there is always one lone walker

on a pathway, or meditating

on the shore of a river

or the ocean.

It was 1981, the end of the gray period,

when artists were expected to follow

the Soviet style of dull colors,

huge muscles,

machetes, guns,

men conquering

enemies, including

nature.

Mireya was ordered to paint over

his canvases, and eventually she was told

she had to burn them—these commands

came from the bearded ruler himself,

so they could not be ignored

or disobeyed.

When Sánchez escaped to Costa Rica,

Mireya followed, and she says he still

lives nearby, painting his own vision

instead of military

propaganda.

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