Becoming Native? The Wisdom of Plants in Margarita Engle'sThe Surrender Tree

What is it about?

This paper situates Margarita Engle’s verse novel, The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba’s Struggle for Freedom (2008), in both the historical context it depicts (the various wars against Spain 1850–99) and the emerging field of human-plant studies (HPS). Noting that Cuba’s indigenous population was destroyed by genocide and imported illnesses, the paper suggests that the island itself, as portrayed in Engle’s poetry, has colluded in human politics and played an active role in determining who can lay claim to Cuban nativity. Human-plant studies provide a rationale for suggesting that, in Engle’s The Surrender Tree, the flora of the island determines the progress of the wars of independence. This argument is extended to crystals, which also ‘grow’ but which are not deemed to be ‘living’, to suggest that, in The Surrender Tree, it is not the people who choose their nation and fight for its independence or to maintain Cuba’s connection to an empire of nations, but rather that the island itself chooses its people.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

As our planet is increasingly under threat from man-made environmental hazards, plant life must be taken more seriously.