Tula ["Books are door shaped"]

Engle’s poem centers around books. Tula would read, and is forbidden from reading, all types of books: ”Poems. / Stories. / Plays” (Lines 20-22). This alludes to the real-life Tula, Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, writing in many genres. For instance, other “Tula” poems in The Lightning Dreamer are about the plays she wrote for an orphan theater under the supervision of nuns. Books, both printed and imagined, are a source of companionship and escape for the orphans and for Tula.

Tula imagines the power of books as a gentle, almost parental, force. Books, she says, are “carrying me” (Line 3). This diction gives a sense of embodied and caring arms. After her father passed, Tula imbued his books with his supportive spirit. In another poem titled “Tula,” that appears later in The Lightning Dreamer, Tula begins with “On lonely nights, I remember / my father, who allowed me to read” (Lines 1-2). This connects to “Tula [Books are door-shaped]” in that both poems show how books help Tula feel “less alone” (Line 7). The diction about combating loneliness characterizes books as companions after losing her father.