Martín de Porres, Hero
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1954. First edition. Hardcover. 8vo. [9], 2-120 pp. Beige cloth with brown lettering on the spine and brown and beige decorations on the front board. Illustrated with several black and white drawings, several full-page and in-text illustrations. Bright and vibrant illustrated endpapers and pastedowns, with color drawings of Martín and his village. The book is set in late sixteenth-century Lima, Peru. Martín and his sister Juana are abandoned by their father (a Spanish gentleman) and neglected by their mother (a freedwoman who is of African or Native American descent). They are biracial children, forced to navigate the racist and classist society put into place by Spanish colonization of Peru. Martín joins a monastery as a servant, but through his charitable acts and kindness he eventually achieves the status of member of the Third Order of St. Dominic (which colonial law technically forbade at the time). This book is a fictionalized version of the life of St. Martín de Porres. St. Martín is the patron saint of mixed-race people, those who seek racial justice, barbers, public health workers, and innkeepers. A moving children's book that addresses a violent history of colonization, and shows that good people can prevail in the face of impossible circumstances. Near Fine / Very Good. Item #00009266
A Near Fine book with a mid-century bookstore sticker on the rear pastedown; dust jacket is Very Good, price-clipped, with a few traces of edge wear.
Price: $50.00