Afro-Cuban women writers found their voices after the revolution, fueled by the national effort to define Cuban culture. An additional factor to their booming success was the increased access to greater educational opportunities than ever before for all Cubans through the free education system. These works often seek to subvert the traditional stereotypes toward mulatto women, especially the idea of the exotic, sexualized mulatta that dominated representations of mulatto women before the revolution. An especially famous example is that of the 19th-century character Cecilia Valdés from the novel of the same name, who is also known as "the little bronze virgin". She embodies sexuality and sensuality, as well as the perceived danger to marriages and families that might be damaged by her seductive ways. This has been combated by reorienting the perspective to that of the woman herself, which reinstates her subjectivity and denies such discourses that make her an object or commodity. Often the writer identifies sources of strength through cultural means, such as in the poem "Ofumelli" by Excilia Saldaña, in which a mulatto woman, prized as a sexual object, is able to fall back on her Lucumi religion as a source of power, and rains down curses against her oppressor.