Enchanted Air by Margarita Engle

1. Enchanted Air by Margarita Engle

2. Summary of Enchanted Air In this poetic memoir, which won the Pura Belpré Author Award, was a YALSA Nonfiction Finalist, and was named a Walter Dean Myers Award Honoree, acclaimed author Margarita Engle tells of growing up as a child of two cultures during the Cold War. Margarita is a girl from two worlds. Her heart lies in Cuba, her mother’s tropical island country, a place so lush with vibrant life that it seems like a fairy tale kingdom. But most of the time she lives in Los Angeles, lonely in the noisy city and dreaming of the summers when she can take a plane through the enchanted air to her beloved island. Words and images are her constant companions, friendly and comforting when the children at school are not. Then a revolution breaks out in Cuba. Margarita fears for her far-away family. When the hostility between Cuba and the United States erupts at the Bay of Pigs Invasion, Margarita’s worlds collide in the worst way possible. How can the two countries she loves hate each other so much? And will she ever get to visit her beautiful island again? (Simon and Schuster)

6. More and More Meanings In one country, I hear the sweet words of another. Dulce de leche means sweet of milk, Guarapo is sugarcane juice. At home in California, when I speak boastful English, I can say that I fly, but when I make the same claim in Spanish, I have to say: voy por avion. I go by airplane. Two countries. Two families. Two sets of words. Am I free to need both, or will I always have to choose only one way of thinking?(Page 13)

7. When Mami tells her flowery tales of Cuba, she fills the twinging words with relatives. But when I ask my Ukrainian-Jewish-American grandma about her childhood in a village near snowy Kiev, all she reveals is a single memory of ice-skating on a frozen pond. Apparently, the length of a grown-up’s growing-up story is determined by the difference between immigration and escape. (Page 28-29) Kinship Two sets of family stories, one long and detailed, about many centuries of island ancestors, all living on the same tropical farm… The other side of the family tells stories that are brief and vague, about violence in the Ukraine, which Dad’s parents had to flee forever, leaving all their loved ones behind. They don’t even know if anyone survived.

8. so much younger than everyone else in a class where I know no one. Now there is only one place where I can truly belong, this endless stack of blank pages in my mind, an empty world where I scribble more and more poems, while I walk back and forth to my city school, wishing for farm life, and a self that feels natural. (Page 32-33) Different During the school year, there is only one of me, a misfit bookworm with long braids, worried eyes, a broken tooth that makes me look like a vampire, and report cards that I have to hide, so I won’t be insulted and teased. When my teachers complain that I’m bored, they make e skip a couple of grades, so now, overnight, I’m suddenly

9. Extension 1. The author leaves a lot for the reader to infer. What can you infer about the narrator’s parents? 2. Why do you think the narrator has to hide her report cards? 3. What is the theme of the poem “Different?” 4. If you were to draw a picture to represent the poem “More and More Meanings,” what image(s) would you include? 5. The subtitle of the book Enchanted Air is “Two Cultures, Two Wings, A memoir.” What information does that give you about the book and author?