Engle Margarita - Soaring Earth

I thank God for hope. Im grateful to Curtis, Flo, and the rest of our family for love. For my thrilling role as the national 20172019 Young Peoples Poet Laureate, profound thanks to the Poetry Foundation. For ongoing encouragement, Im grateful to Jennifer Crow, Kristene Scolefield, and the Arne Nixon Center for the Study of Childrens Literature. For help with a phoenetic depiction of Hindi phrases, I am thankful to Gauri Manglik, Jaskaranjit Singh, and Kristi Miller. Thanks also to Mila Rianto, Sandra Ros Balderrama, Angelica Carpenter, Joan Schoettler, and Ann Caruthers.

As always, Im deeply grateful to my agent, Michelle Humphrey, and to my editor, Reka Simonsen, and the entire publishing team at Atheneum. ALSO BY MARGARITA ENGLE Enchanted Air: Two Cultures, Two Wings: A Memoir Aire encantado: Dos culturas, dos alas: una memoria Jazz Owls: A Novel of the Zoot Suit Riots Forest World Lion Island: Cubas Warrior of Words Silver People: Voices from the Panama Canal The Lightning Dreamer: Cubas Greatest Abolitionist The Wild Book Hurricane Dancers: The First Caribbean Pirate Shipwreck The Firefly Letters: A Suffragettes Journey to Cuba Tropical Secrets: Holocaust Refugees in Cuba The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cubas Struggle for Freedom The Poet Slave of Cuba: A Biography of Juan Francisco Manzano

Margarita Engle is the national Young Peoples Poet Laureate and the first Latino to receive that honor. She is a Cuban American author of many verse novels, including The Surrender Tree , a Newbery Honor book, and The Lightning Dreamer , a PEN Literary Award for Young Adult Literature winner. Her verse memoir Enchanted Air received the Pura Belpr Author Award and was a Walter Honor Book, Younger Readers Category, and a finalist for the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults, among other accolades. Her picture book Drum Dream Girl received the Charlotte Zolotow Award. Margarita was born in Los Angeles, but developed a deep attachment to her mothers homeland during childhood summers with relatives.

She continues to visit Cuba as often as she can. Visit her at margaritaengle.com. Visit us at simonandschuster.com/teen Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Margarita-Engle Atheneum Books for Young Readers Simon & Schuster, New York

I never imagined there could be another time as turbulent as the 1960s. The Vietnam War, which seemed to last forever, should have served as a warning against the quagmires of twenty-first century, US-led conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. American high school students today have never known a single minute when their country was not at war. Peace, civil rights, freedom of expression, environmental causes, and all the other goals of my generations protests are once again under threat.

Defending those rights and freedoms is necessary, but protests sometimes grow violent, and when they do, its confusing. College is hard work, even in quieter times. Distractions and discouragement are common. Chaos and other challenges such as homesickness, hostile relationships, substance abuse, family pressures, or financial hardships can lead to dismay, even depression. More than half of all college students drop out. Community college saved me.

The classes were small enough for personal interaction with professors who loved to teach. Fees were low, giving me time to experiment by studying different subjects until I found one I truly loved. I wrote Soaring Earth because I hope that high school and middle school students who are already dreaming of college might realize that its fine to follow any one of a variety of pathways. Big, famous campuses arent the only ones that can offer an inspiring education. All that matters is choosing a place to start, and then persevering. I ended up working as an agronomist, botanist, and water conservation specialist, as well as a poet, novelist, and journalist.

I have been married to the handsome guy with the dog for forty years, and I still feel like hope follows wherever love goes.

Destinations sweep over me from colors in dazzling photos, a warm, inviting quality seen only in the light of tropical air. Ill save piles of babysitting money and make my escape from Los Angeles. No more smog, just a rain forest, peaceful beneath sky so intense that each breath must be enchanted like Cubas aire , floating birdlike and wild above jungles and farms, green between two shades of blue, sea and heaven, half wave-washed memory, half soaring daydream. Where should I travel? Peru, Borneo, India? The brightness of photos is dimmed only by my age, too young for solitary journeys, too old for imaginary horse-friends. India sounds perfect, but my travel dreams have to wait.

High school starts right after my fourteenth birthday, the halls a whirlwind of strangers... but Im pretty good at starting over because I have plenty of practice saying goodbye to the past, so after school, I sit on a rigid wall wishing for the future, waiting to be older, my current age a hybrid half riddle, half puzzle.

The wall is a barrier that separates John Marshall High School from the street, a dry imitation of my seawall memory, that coral stone Malecn in Havana. This wall is designed to separate waves of raucous students from dangerous riptides of traffic. Or is it just meant to keep rich kids and regular ones apart? The wealthy have cars that zoom away while the rest of us wait for a bus or a parent, the wall dividing cascades of us into tide pools, settled groups of relaxed kids who met in kindergarten, and seaweed-like strays, those of us who transferred from out of the district, and arrived knowing no one. Loners. Stoners. Stoners.

Will I ever wash ashore in a swirling puddle of friendship? With my wide Cuban hips and frizzy black hair, Ill never belong with blond surfers or elegant socials, so I just have to hope that sooner or later, other drifting bookworms will find me.

It doesnt take too many weeks on the wall for one of the short-haired, military ROTC boys to start flirting with me. Im Cuban American. Hes Mexican American. Close enough. But his army hair worries me.

How long will it be until he ends up in Vietnam, killing dying or both? I belong to a family of pacifists, always marching to protest, because the Cold War has already sliced our familia in half, so just imagine how much worse it must be in southeast Asia, where US bombs and chemical napalm flames burn villagers alive on the news every night.

No war can last forever, so sooner or later M.s army world and my peace dove wishes will surely meet in the middle. Wont they? Suddenly my plan to spend weekends babysitting in order to save money for tropical expeditions no longer seems as urgent as Friday nights cruising around in a low-rider car, my fourteen-year-old freshman mind so imperfectly matched with an almost-eighteen senior, mi novio , my boyfriend. His older pals/ carnales in the backseat have already dropped out of school, joined the army, fought in Vietnam, and returned with tattoos and all sorts of other scars. Time t w i s t s and tangles, spinning me far away from unrealistic travel dreams. Homework. Homework.

Research papers. Friday nights cruising. Saturday mornings at the Arroyo Seco Library followed by babysitting jobs, my money stashed and slowly growing toward some remote corner of Bengal or Kashmir.

I cant stop, even though M.s friends make fun of me for studying hard and reading travel tales in my spare time, the places theyve seen on their way to the war so mysterious and adventurous to me, a too-young girl who understands nothing about battles. Peace freak. Hippie. Hippie.