Teresa Cárdenas, translated by David Unger,
Letters To My Mother
Groundwood Books/House of Anansi Press, 2006.

Rating: E

"I’d be better off up there with you.

Each and every night I wait for you to fly down on your paper kite and invite me to die once and for all. …

I don’t know how it happened, but my sketchbook is full of words, shapes, phrases, memories and drawings - the drawings of a little girl putting her hand in her mother’s, of a mother and father kissing each other, of the stars in Mamá’s eyes, of Mamá playing among the clouds. …

Mamá, I don’t know why you left me all alone, without your kisses, your embraces, without the daisy scent that always trailed behind you…

I haven’t told anyone how much I miss you. I can’t bear much more of this silence. I’m going to begin writing to you…" (p. 9-10).

So begins Teresa Cárdenas’ stirring book Letters To My Mother. Through a series of letters, written to her dead mother, we learn that the young writer has a difficult life with her aunt and cousins, who resent her and treat her poorly. The girl’s grandmother does not provide any support either, because she is angry about her own life.

Through the letters, the reader sees this young girl evolve as she reaches out beyond her immediate family and finds new friends who become her safe haven. These friends, including a boy with his own problems and an old woman, help the girl begin to heal from the losses she has faced.

Letters To My Mother is a sparsely written but powerful book, that will provide young adult readers with much to think about in terms of life and love and the power of friendship and self-respect. Highly recommended.

Thematic Links: Cuba; Family Stories; Books Written in Letter Form

Joanne de Groot, Teacher and Librarian, Spruce Grove, AB and Sessional Instructor with the Teacher-Librarianship by Distance Learning Program at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB
Vol. 12, number 1
October 2006

*Rating System:
E - Excellent, enduring, everyone should see it!
G - Good, even great at times, generally useful!
A - Average, all right, has its applications.
P - Problematic, puzzling, poorly presented.