Poet and writer Solita Solano was strong-willed, independent, and exotic-looking. She rebelled against her puritanical, patriarchical middle-class family, loved women and travel, and lived much of her adult life in Paris, France. Her ambition was to become a writer, but her novels "had the honor of not pleasing most critics." Solano was born in Troy, New York, in 1888 and christened Sarah Wilkinson, but "she hated her Anglo-Saxon birth name with its upstate associations," and adopted the name of a fictitious Spanish grandmother. Her childhood was not happy; her father disapproved of her literary ambitions and locked up his library to prevent her from reading his books. Solano felt she was ugly and less favored than her younger brothers. In 1934, she expressed this in a poem: "Is this a daughter?/ … Can't you act like your brother?/ … No one asks you to be beautiful/ No one wants you with a brain/ A damnable thing for a woman." Moreover, formal education did not appeal to her; sent to a convent school "for more discipline," Solano lied, stole, and read forbidden books. When her father died in 1903, Solano's portion of the estate was entrusted to her two younger brothers to administer. And she was forbidden to marry without the consent of her mother or brothers (or their heirs) or she would forfeit her inheritance. In 1904, she eloped with Oliver Filley, an engineer with the Bureau of Public Works in the Philippines. During the next four years, Solano "surveyed land, plotted maps" and helped construct roads in the Philippines; she also learned three Malay languages, was prominent in the social life of Manila, and traveled to China and Japan. The marriage failed, and Solano escaped by climbing out of a bedroom window during the night. In 1913, the marriage was annulled, but she still had lost any claim to her inheritance.

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