'We Are Force': The Generational Mantra of Resilience in Of Women and Salt
The Mantra's Origins: A Political Cry in a Cigar Workshop
The phrase 'We are force' enters the novel in 1866, in a cigar workshop in Camagüey, Cuba. The lector Antonio reads aloud a letter from Victor Hugo to Emilia Casanova de Villaverde, the Cuban women's independence leader in exile. Hugo's words — 'Who are we, weakness? No, we are force' — are addressed to 'Women of Cuba' and frame collective strength against colonial oppression. María Isabel, the only female cigar roller in the workshop, hears these words and feels her hands shake with rage. That night, the words 'reverberate through her' as she wishes Antonio had read Emilia's own words instead of Hugo's.
This origin matters because the mantra begins as a public, political declaration — a rallying cry from a European literary figure to Cuban women fighting for independence. It is not yet a personal mantra; it is a collective assertion of strength in the face of colonial violence. The novel's discussion questions explicitly flag 'the recurring phrase' as a point of inquiry, signaling that the novel itself treats it as a significant motif.
The Inscription: From Public Cry to Private Mark
At some point, the words 'We are force' are written in the margin of a Spanish first edition of Les Misérables. The novel does not explicitly identify who wrote this inscription. The book surfaces in the home of Dolores, Jeanette's grandmother, in Cuba. Jeanette discovers it on a visit, noticing 'something scrawled in the margin, in black ink turned wispy gray, ornate script.' She can make out only the last word: 'fuerza. Force.'
Later, she examines it more closely: 'We are force, the ink reads in perfect script. Such an inscrutable thing to write in a book.'
The transition from Hugo's spoken letter to a handwritten margin note transforms the phrase from a public declaration into a private inscription. Someone — likely a woman in the family line, given the book's provenance — chose to preserve these words in a beloved novel, turning a political cry into a personal artifact. The book itself, a first edition that Jeanette estimates could be a contemporary of Cecilia Valdés (1839), carries the weight of literary history alongside the intimate scrawl.
Jeanette's Encounter: Force as Obligation
Jeanette's response to the inscription is notably ambivalent. She calls it 'inscrutable' and immediately thinks: 'I am forced to love you. But then, You are forced to love me too.'
This reading twists the mantra's meaning. Where Hugo's original frames force as collective strength, Jeanette hears the word 'forced' — obligation, compulsion, the weight of family bonds she cannot escape. This is consistent with Jeanette's arc: a recovering addict who has strained relationships with her parents, who feels the burden of family expectations, and who struggles with her own sense of inadequacy. Her visit to Cuba is shadowed by her mother's estrangement from Dolores, and Jeanette herself has avoided her parents' home for a month because her sick father lives there.
Jeanette's interpretation reveals how the mantra's meaning is not fixed. It shifts with the person who encounters it, reflecting their circumstances and emotional state.
Jeanette's Addition: 'We Are More Than We Think We Are'
At some point, Jeanette adds her own words beneath the original inscription: 'We are more than we think we are.' This addition reframes the mantra from a statement of existing strength to a claim about untapped potential. It suggests that force is not just what women already have, but what they have yet to discover in themselves.
The chapter in which Ana receives the book is titled 'More Than We Think,' signaling the importance of this addition. Jeanette, who struggled with addiction and recovery and died of an overdose, nonetheless left behind this affirmation of human capacity. The words carry a particular poignancy given that Jeanette's own life was cut short by the very struggle the mantra seems to address.
Ana's Reception: A Cry Across Time
In 2019, thirteen-year-old Ana crosses the Rio Grande and makes her way to Miami, where she finds Carmen, the mother of her former neighbor Jeanette. On Ana's fifteenth birthday, Carmen gives her the Les Misérables first edition. Carmen explains that after her own mother died, a niece in Cuba sent the book to Jeanette. Carmen had withheld it because she feared Jeanette might sell it during a relapse.
Ana reads the two inscriptions — the faded 'We are force' and Jeanette's 'We are more than we think we are.' She doesn't know why Jeanette wrote those words, but she 'chose to believe the sentence, the scribble, was a cry across time.'
This is the mantra's final transformation: from political rallying cry, to private inscription, to a message Ana receives as a gift across generations. Ana, who has survived detention, deportation, and a dangerous border crossing, reads the words as an affirmation of her own resilience. She thinks: 'There was always more.' And she imagines giving the book away someday to 'someone who reminded her of herself.'
The Mantra and the Novel's Themes
The mantra threads through several of the novel's central concerns:
Intergenerational trauma and resilience: The phrase passes from 1866 Cuba to present-day Miami, connecting women across more than 150 years. Each woman who encounters it brings her own context — María Isabel's colonial Cuba, Jeanette's Miami with its addiction and family fractures, Ana's experience of migration and displacement. The mantra's survival across generations speaks to the novel's broader exploration of intergenerational trauma.
Mother-daughter relationships: The book itself passes through a matrilineal chain — from the Cuban bookcase to Jeanette, then to Ana. Carmen's role as intermediary is complicated: she encouraged Jeanette to call the police on Ana, leading to Ana's deportation. Yet she also preserves the book and gives it to Ana. The mantra's transmission is not clean or simple; it carries the weight of these complicated mother-daughter relationships.
Migration and displacement: The book travels from Cuba to Miami, mirroring the journeys of the novel's characters. The mantra crosses borders along with the women who carry it.
Addiction and recovery: Jeanette's addition to the mantra — 'We are more than we think we are' — takes on particular poignancy given her death from overdose. Her words suggest a belief in human capacity that she herself struggled to access.
Study Questions
1. How does the mantra's meaning shift from its origin in Hugo's letter to Ana's reception of it?
In Hugo's letter, 'We are force' is a collective political declaration — a response to the question 'Who are we, weakness?' It frames Cuban women as a unified force against colonial oppression. As a handwritten margin note, it becomes a private inscription whose author is unknown. Jeanette reads it ambivalently, hearing 'forced' as obligation. Ana, receiving the book as a gift, interprets it as 'a cry across time' — a message of resilience meant for her. The meaning shifts from collective to personal, from political to existential.
2. Why does Jeanette's reading of 'We are force' differ from Ana's?
Jeanette encounters the inscription during a visit to Cuba, in her grandmother's home, amid strained family relationships. She reads 'force' as 'forced' — obligation, compulsion. Her thought 'I am forced to love you' reflects her ambivalence about family bonds. Ana, by contrast, receives the book as a birthday gift after surviving detention, deportation, and a dangerous border crossing. She is primed to read the words as affirmation. The same words yield different meanings depending on the reader's circumstances.
3. What does the physical book — the Les Misérables first edition — symbolize beyond the mantra itself?
The book is a physical object that travels across time and space: from 1866 Cuba (where Les Misérables was read aloud in cigar workshops) to Dolores's bookcase in Cuba, to Jeanette in Miami, to Ana. It carries the weight of literary culture, family history, and the mantra's transmission. Carmen's decision to withhold the book from Jeanette — fearing she might sell it — and then to give it to Ana shows how the book functions as a contested inheritance. For Ana, the book represents connection to a past she never knew and a future she might pass on.
4. How does the mantra connect to the novel's treatment of mother-daughter relationships?
The mantra passes through a chain of women — from the women of Cuba addressed in Hugo's letter, to the unknown hand that wrote it in the book's margin, to Jeanette, to Ana. The transmission is not smooth: Jeanette's relationship with her mother is strained, Carmen's role in Ana's deportation complicates her gift, and Ana has lost her own mother. The mantra's survival despite these fractures suggests that something persists across generations even when relationships fail. The words endure even when the women who carry them cannot.