Tag Archives: women’s history

Delmira Agustini: (1886-1914) Uruguayan poet. Together with Gabriela Mistral, Juana de Ibarbourou, Alfonsina Storni, and Dulce Maria Loynaz, Agustini is one of the key voices in the rich tradition of Spanish American poetry by women. Influenced by Ruben Dario’s Modernismo, her poetry is marked by sensuality and eroticism. Agustini published three collections of poetry: El libro blanco (1907); Cantos de la manana (1910); and Los calices vacios (1913). At the time of her death, she was working on Los astros del abismo (1954). Agustini’s biography has drawn almost as much attention as her writing. She was raised in cultivated and conventional surroundings in Montevideo, but was murdered by her estranged husband less than a year after their marriage.

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

“Claribel Alegria: (1924-2018) Salvadoran writer, born in Nicaragua. Alegria has published poetry, novelas, and novels. Her work ranges from the intimate lyric to agonized denunciation of the horrors that have beset Central America. Her Sobrevivo (1978) won the Casa de las Americas award in poetry. She excels at a narrative poetry that that is compact, tender, fanciful, and even fantastic, Alegria deals with love, solitude, family life, and injustice from a political and feminist stance, as in La mujer del Rio Sampul (1987; tr Woman of the River, 1990). She has coauthored many books with her husband, Darwin J. Flakoll, particularly testimonial accounts of the Nicaraguan revolution and the lives of Salvadoran women. Cenizas de Izalco (1966; tr Ashes of Izalco, 1989) is a recreation of the peasant uprising of 1932. Luisa en el pais de la realidad (1987; tr Luisa in Realityland, 1987) is an experimental novel.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.