On the impulse behind Cartographies, Marjorie Agosín writes, "I have always wanted to understand the meaning of displacement and the quest or longing for home." In these lyrical meditations in prose and poetry, Agosín evokes the many places on four continents she has visited or called home. Recording personal and spiritual voyages, the author opens herself to follow the ambiguous, secret map of her memory, which "does not betray." Agosín's journey begins in Chile, where she spent her childhood before her family left in the early days of the Pinochet dictatorship. Of Santiago Agosín writes, "Day and night I think about my city. I dream the dream of all exiles." Agosín also travels to Prague and Vienna, ancestral homes of her grandparents, and to Valparaíso in Chile, which received them as immigrants. Kneeling among the yellow mounds at the Terezin concentration camp, where twenty-two of her relatives died, Agosín places "small stones, shrubs, the stuff of life on graves I did not recognize." And then on through the Middle East, the Mediterranean, Europe, and the Americas . . . Everywhere, she is drawn to women in whose devotion and creativity she sees a deep vein of hope--from Julia, keeper of the synagogue at Rhodes, to the women potters in the Chilean town of Pomaire. Agosín writes of diaspora, exile, and oppression, yet only to highlight the dignity and valor of those who find refuge in their humanity and their art, in community and tradition. Cartographies shows us what can be found when we journey with openness, as approachable to strangers as we are to ourselves.
This collection of letters chronicles a remarkable, long-term friendship between two women who, despite differences of religion and ethnicity, have followed remarkably parallel paths from their first adolescent meeting in their native Chile to their current lives in exile as writers, academics, and political activists in the United States. Spanning more than thirty years (1966-2000), Agosín's and Sepúlveda's letters speak eloquently on themes that are at once personal and political—family life and patriarchy, women's roles, the loneliness of being a religious or cultural outsider, political turmoil in Chile, and the experience of exile.
In this classic memoir that explores the Nazi presence in the south of Chile after the war, Marjorie Agosín writes in the voice of her mother, Frida, who grew up as the daughter of European Jewish immigrants in Chile in the World War II era. Woven into the narrative are the stories of Frida’s father, who had to leave Vienna in 1920 because he fell in love with a Christian cabaret dancer; of her paternal grandmother, who arrived in Chile later with a number tattooed on her arm; and of her great-grandmother from Odessa, who loved the Spanish language so much that she repeated its harmonious sounds even in her sleep. Agosín’s A Cross and a Star is a moving testament to endurance and to the power of memory and words. This edition includes a collection of important new photographs, a new afterword by the author, and a foreword by Ruth Behar.
In the final chapter of The Alphabet in My Hands, she addresses two important topics: her current residence in New England and the central role of writing and literature in her life."--BOOK JACKET.
Tapestries of Hope, Threads of Love tells the story of ordinary women living in terror and extreme poverty under General Pinochet's oppressive rule in Chile (1973-1989). These women defied the military dictatorship by embroidering their sorrow on scraps of cloth, using needles and thread as one of the boldest means of popular protest and resistance in Latin America. The arpilleras they made--patchwork tapestries with scenes of everyday life and memorials to their disappeared relatives--were smuggled out of Chile and brought to the world the story of their fruitless searches in jails, morgues, government offices, and the tribunals of law for their husbands, brothers, and sons. Marjorie Agosín, herself a native of and exile from Chile, has spent more than thirty years interviewing the arpilleristas and following their work. She knows their stories intimately and knows, too, that none of them has ever found a disappeared relative alive. Even though the dictatorship ended in 1989 and democracy returned to Chile, no full account of the detained and disappeared has ever been offered. Still, many women maintain hope and continue to make arpilleras, both in memory and as art. This new edition of the book, updated for students, includes a reaction to the death of General Pinochet, a chronology of Chile, several new testimonies from arpilleristas in their own words, and an introduction by Peter Kornbluh. It retains a section of full-color plates of arpilleras, an afterword by Peter Winn, and a foreword by Isabel Allende. Students and interested readers will find the arpilleras beautiful, moving, and ultimately hopeful, and the testimonies a powerful way to learn about the history of contemporary Latin America and the arpillera movement in Chile.
This bilingual (facing-page English and Spanish) poetry collection documents the Jewish-Chilean-American author's search for remnants of her grandmother's life during the Holocaust in Prague and Vienna, and later in Chile.
This is the first collection of stories by acclaimed poet Marjorie Agosín. In lyrical pieces more like poems-in-prose, Agosín celebrates both her own ethnic heritage and the universal human truths that demonstrate the myriad ways in which happiness is ultimately revealed to us. "These pieces are like tiny jewels that reflect dazzlingly a million truths."--Américas Magazine
An eleven-year-old’s world is upended by political turmoil in this “lyrically ambitious tale of exile and reunification” (Kirkus Reviews) from an award-winning poet, based on true events in Chile. Celeste Marconi is a dreamer. She lives peacefully among friends and neighbors and family in the idyllic town of Valparaiso, Chile—until one day when warships are spotted in the harbor and schoolmates start disappearing from class without a word. Celeste doesn’t quite know what is happening, but one thing is clear: no one is safe, not anymore. The country has been taken over by a government that declares artists, protestors, and anyone who helps the needy to be considered “subversive” and dangerous to Chile’s future. So Celeste’s parents—her educated, generous, kind parents—must go into hiding before they, too, “disappear.” Before they do, however, they send Celeste to America to protect her. As Celeste adapts to her new life in Maine, she never stops dreaming of Chile. But even after democracy is restored to her home country, questions remain: Will her parents reemerge from hiding? Will she ever be truly safe again? Accented with interior artwork, steeped in the history of Pinochet’s catastrophic takeover of Chile, and based on many true events, this multicultural ode to the power of revolution, words, and love is both indelibly brave and heartwrenchingly graceful.
There are never enough good stories for children." So has said Marjorie Agosin, the editor of this superb collection of mythological & historical tales. Rendered anew in Spanish by some of Chile's foremost writers, including Gabriela Mistral, Alicia Morel, Virginia Cruzat, Jacqueline Balcells & Maria Cristina de Fonseca & translated into flowing English by Celeste Kostopulos-Cooperman these stories speak of the most ancient of things with a contemporary voice: about the origin of the Araucan Race, & that of The Mapuches, the People of the Earth & about the origins of Chile itself. Marjorie Agosin is herself originally from Chile & is the author of the MOTHERS OF THE PLAZA DE MAYO, WOMEN OF SMOKE: LATIN AMERICAN WOMEN IN LITERATURE, & SCRAPS OF LIFE: CHILEAN ARPILLERAS, & several volumes of poetry as well. She is a Professor of Spanish Literature at Wellesley College near Boston. Her translator, Celeste Kostopolos-Cooperman is a Professor of Humanities & Modern Language at Suffolk University.
This collection reflects the author's deeply rooted passion for nature, for life, and for being. Agosín spent her summers at the Chilean seaside, near Neruda's home at Isla Negra. "The sea, the rocks, marine images became important elements in my creative work," she said recently. Here she creates a world where everything touches the sea and is, in turn, touched by it, a world peopled by those who "carry the scents of the river and the sign of water." "Agosín's voice [is] ripe with sensuality."--Booklist
The Chilean coup d'Žtat of 1973 was a watershed event in the history of Chile. It was also a defining moment in the life of writer Marjorie Agos’n. This collection of prose vignettes and free verse draws upon her experiences as a child in Chile, an expatriate abroad, and a minority JewÑeven in the land she calls homeÑto create a striking portrait of a life of exile. The tone of the book varies as it lyrically explores the geography of Chile and weaves into it the themes of exile and oppression. At times the words become hymns to the physical beauty of her country, evoking the grandeur of this land extending to the southernmost tip of the world. At times they are intimate and melancholy, exploring personal and familial history through miniature portraits that reveal the pain of being different. Finally the tone becomes angry as she denounces the injustices committed against her friends and against the families of the disappeared during the seventeen-year dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Combining themes of memory, childhood, minority issues, Judaism, and political oppression, this collection contains some of Agos’nÕs strongest work. Of Earth and Sea is a poetic autobiography that explores the world of Chile with eyes that see both despair and hope.
In this unique memoir, renowned poet, fiction writer, critic, and activist Marjorie Agosin writes in the voice of her mother, Frida, the daughter of European Jewish immigrants, living in Chile in the years before, during, and after World War II. Frida recounts stories from her family's Jewish/Chilean history: of her father, who had to leave Vienna in 1920 because he fell in love with a Christian cabaret dancer; of her paternal grandmother, who came to Chile later with a number tattooed on her arm; and of her great grandmother, an immigrant from Odessa, who learned to speak Spanish in Chile and loved the language so much that she repeated its harmonious sounds even in her sleep. Frida's stories of the past soften the realities of present times, when some immigrants from Germany still display portraits of Hitler m their homes and Jews still remain, after two generations, strangers in their own land. These stories are permeated with the shadow of faraway war in Europe, which haunts Frida's dreams and is a vivid presence in the everyday life in this Chilean town. For Frida the cross and the star of the title come to define two worlds that are for her distinct, yet inexorably entwined. Agosin's poetic reflections reveal a culture and a landscape little-known outside of her native land, explore the boundaries of "voice", and create a moving testament to endurance and to the power of memory and of words.
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