Bravo!: Poems about Amazing Latinos by Margarita Engle (review)

Eighteen Latinos who made their marks in the New World are featured in verses in their own voices attesting to their achievements and their struggles. Some, particularly the more contemporary entries, will likely be familiar—béisbol great Roberto Clemente, jazz artist Tito Puente, activist César Chávez; other names, such as librarian Pura Belpré, will hopefully ring a bell. The usefulness of this title, however, lies in introducing a spectrum of lesser knowns who collectively represent Latino contributions in all walks of life: e.g., early nineteenth-century pacifist priest Félix Varela, who spoke out against slavery; translator José Marti, whose work introduced Spanish-speaking people to the American literature that influenced Latino poets; Aida de Acosta, whose airship piloting earned her the title “First Woman of Powered Flight”; and naturalist George Meléndez Wright, whose conservation efforts helped saved the trumpeter swan from extinction. The poems themselves are brief and serviceable but often simply inclined to exposition. Ynés Mexia’s declamation, for example, falls fairly flat: “I go to college in California, study botany,/ and then set out to explore jungles/ all over Mexico and South America,/ collecting fascinating plants/ that are completely new/ to science.” Occasionally, though, a turn of phrase is particularly resonant and suggestive of what Engle accomplishes in her longer poetry pieces. López’s full page, mixed-media portraiture captures both the nobility and humanity of his subjects, and their thumbnail reappearance with in the appended prose notes about the subjects will assist readers in correlating poem to note; there are no source notes or bibliography.