Fredrika Bremer (1801-1865) was a Swedish writer and women's rights pioneer. She was actually born in Finland (then part of the Kingdom of Sweden), but the family moved near Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, when Fredrika was only 3 years old. Fredrika Bremer's novel Hertha (1856), about the lack of freedom for women, lead to a debate in the Swedish parliament which in its turn lead to changes in the law and to the birth of the real women's rights movement in Sweden.
Fredrika Bremer travelled a lot and, unusually for a woman in the earlier part of the 19th century, she often travelled on her own. She spent two years in the United States between 1849-1851 and some time also in Cuba.
Margarita Engle has written a lovely, little book called The Firefly Letters: A Suffragette's Journey to Cuba about Bremer's trip to Cuba. The book, which is in fact a long prose poem told from the points of view of all the main characters (Fredrika Bremer, the daughter of her Cuban host family, the young slave woman acting as her interpreter, and the slave woman's husband), is a perfect example of how less is sometimes more. I read most of the book during two 20 minutes metro rides and loved every sentence of it.
In spite of being a rather slim book, The Firefly Letters manages to touch two important issues, namely slavery and the position of women. Both issues are tackled from multible points of view i.e. slavery from the point of view of the slaves themselves, the owners, and the outsiders (Bremer). Woman's place is discussed from the point of view of a (relatively) independent Northern European woman, the very sheltered upperclass Cuban women, and the slaves. And all this in poetry!
However, if you are not a fan of poetry, don't be afraid of The Firefly Letters! The text is very straight forward. I might call it prose disguised as poetry. :)
The only thing that bothered me about this book, was the subtitle. Bremer was not a suffragette. Suffragettes were originally members of the militant Women's Social and Political Union that was founded in Britain in 1903, nearly 40 years after Bremer's death.
The Firefly Letters is also very pleasing to the eye. The layout is very nice and isn't that a beautiful cover?
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October was another month with very little reading for me. Dancing and other sports took much of my freetime. We had three dance competitions and did really well in all of them which was wonderful, so, I don't, in fact, mind too much of not having been able to spend as much time reading as I would have liked to. It would have been nice to shorten my TBR pile a little, but there is only 24 hours in a day and I need my beauty sleep as well. :)
October wrap-up:
Books read: 5
Books read in English: 3
Books read in Finnish: 2
Finnish books read: 1
Fiction: 5
Nonfiction: 0
Books reviewed: 2
List of the books I read in October:
-Emma Donoghue: Room
-Ulf Lundell: Säämies
-Fiona Shaw: Tell It to the Bees
-Anja Snellman: Parvekejumalat
-Jeanette Winterson: The PowerBook
I'm very much hoping on being able to post a bit more often soon. In addition to having been and still being busy with my dancing, September-October always seem to be the busiest months at work.
At least my November have had a pretty good start when it comes to reading. I have already read 3 books and started a fourth. :)
I'm thinking of writing a post about my second favorite author Jeanette Winterson (Woolf is my no 1.) and another one about the 10th Helsinki Book Fair that took place the last weekend of Oct. I have also a pretty amazing signed copy I'm going to give away soon. :) So, stay tuned! And as the giveaway is going to be the very first I've ever done here, any advice on how to organise it would be highly appreciated!
Happy reading everyone!
