Known for her passionate words, outstanding leadership, and personal touch to each work, Gabriela Mistral is one of the most famous and respected World Poets of her time. Her success is measured not only through her incredible works of poetry, but also her leadership as a woman in Latin America. By the end of her life, Mistral was a part of the United Nations, Chilean Government, received the Nobel Prize in Literature, and played a key role in reshaping schools and libraries in Mexico. She is most known for her love for children and the intense passion she pours into her works. Her constant love and passion for both education and writing is admirable and sets a tremendous example for young writers even today.
Mistral was born into a family of educators in Chile on April 7, 1889. Her father, a local teacher, abandoned her family when she was three-years-old, thus she was primarily raised by her mother, Petrolina Alcayaga de Molina. Mistral’s birth name is actually Lucila Godoy Alcayaga; however, when she began writing, she chose the pen name of “Gabriela Mistral” which means Mediterranean Wind. In her early life, Mistral was expelled from secondary school for Paegan ideas and then attended the Pedagogical College in Santiago. Directly after college, Mistral began her teaching career as a teacher’s assistant for pre-school (Howard 457-461). Working her way up the educational totem pole, Mistral received her teaching certification in 1910 and eventually taught secondary
Salomé Ureña de Henríquez is one of the most influential poets of the Dominican Republic in the nineteenth century. Her roles as a daughter, writer, patriot, teacher, wife, and mother blended throughout her life, and inspired her acclaimed poems. As an advocate for women’s education, she opened the doors of higher education to the women of her period and then on.
Ten year after her second marriage happiness surprised Julia, she knew the man who became her third husband. The true companero for the women she had become. The “first Muse” by Julia Alvarez show us that we have to overcome our obstacle in order to get successful. Julia had to deal with a dictatorship and bullying at her school but that didn’t stop
After Julia and her family got used to living in New York, getting accustomed to the type of buildings and their new environment in general became easier but being able to be seen through two different personas was much harder. Julia expressed this constant dilemma in knowing how to represent both her Dominican and now American side without losing “Julia”. The poem “Bilingual Sestina”, represents this challenge and how Julia found herself adopting english into her life with the chance of losing touch with spanish. That is what this poem deals with, the loss of a special feeling through the gradual loss of a language, “even spanish failed us back then when we saw how frail a word is when faced with the thing it names”(Julia Alvarez's "Bilingual
Style is the special way an author creates his or her work. Gabriela Mistral exploits an informal style in her poem “Ballad”. The poem discusses the poets feelings and is written in first person point of view validating its informality; “My heart’s blood.”-Line17 using ‘my’ and describing her heart confirm this. Diction contributes to style in an extensive way. Repetition is a form of diction that is heavily spread out through the poem. “Saw him pass by.”-Lines 2/6, “He goes loving.../...in bloom”-Lines1-2/11-12, and “He will go.../through eternity.”-Lines 19-20/23-24. The repetition emphasizes the authors style an diction. In this poem diction is displayed through negative connotation. Choosing to describe her emotional state as “,wretched,”-Line 5, instead of sad or unhappy, and by adding a
Miguel Piñero is a famous Port Rican writer, who wrote several poems portraying what Latin people has been through in the seventies in the United States of America. The writer chose an interesting titles for his poems which indicate what the reasons behind the struggle of Latin people face in USA. At the end of the poem” Seeking the Cause”, according to the write, Pinero in this poem listed the causes of the person’s death, which are his skin color, blood, race, and speech. However, the writer has a transition at the end of the poem which reveals that the dead person was the main cause of the death. In addition, in his second poem “La Bodega Sold Dreams”, the writer mentions how his dream of becoming a well- known poet was repressed due to life’s difficulties. Reaching his dream was symbolized by a traffic light that keeps switching which prevent him from achieving his dream as a poet.
This passage was written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez in The Chronicle of a Death Foretold. It is about Divina Flor who explains to the writer why she did not warn Santiago Nasar that he was going to die. She recounts that, as a child, she was sexually assaulted by him. This passage is so important to this book because it brings out the themes of women's roles in Latin American Society, power and culture. These themes help the Marquez bring out the important contexts of the story so readers can understand the importance of the story. In The Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Gabriel uses structure techniques, symbols, contrast, foreshadowing, imagery and figurative language to bring out the theme of gender roles.
Throughout history poetry has been written since earlier 2000 B.C. and it was not until the late sixteen centuries, that poetry for Chicanos, (Mexican-American), were getting written. During and after the Mexican-American War of 1848, is when the Mexican-American poetry became popular. However, the real popularity and the creative literature activity among Chicano authors was in the 1960 through the 70’s; l this era being called the Renaissance Era. Chicano's often shape their poetry and solidify their cultural and the struggles of their minority culture. In this paper I am going to compare and contrast two Mexican-American poets. Telling the reader about the different types of poetry each one used, along with ways that they expressed themselves.
In the profile article “Jimmy Santiago Baca: Poetry as Lifesaver” author Rob Baker, who also is a creative writing and English teacher proves to not only the readers but also the National Council of Teachers of English the significance of poetry. The authors main point is that poetry saved Jimmy Santiago Baca’s life, he shows us how by explaining the emotions when Baca began to read poetry; he then went on to write poetry and even publish his own works while still in prison, after Baca’s release, he became a dedicated teacher who also works with gang members and teaches workshops.
In the fabricated novel In the Time of the Butterflies, written by Julia Alvarez, the author illuminates details of a revolution and the family of the Mirabal sisters. Alvarez’s fictionalized account of the Dominican Republic’s revolution and the Mirabal’s personal lives paints us a vivid image of the events during Trujillo’s dictatorship. We get personally touched by each of the characters in the novel, but Minerva Mirabal, the third sister, stands out with a true heart and spirit of the resistance. Minerva Mirabal has the strongest mind set apart from her sisters and gets greatly invested in the revolution. Her association with the rebel cause highlights the list of the events the sisters endure during their lives. Minerva’s personality is
Welcome and thankyou to this discussion on celebrating a poet whose powerful language engages and influences others. The poet whose contributions demonstrate these features is Maya Angelou whose influence is evident in the poetry she produced. Maya Angelou is an American poet and civil rights activist, born in 1928 whose poetry is famous for its inspiration and is considered ‘one of the great voices of contemporary literature.’ (Metacritic, 2015) Maya Angelou’s personal and cultural experiences communicate the power of the African- Americans during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s and 1970s era to overcome adversity and oppression that are clearly reflected in her inspirational poems ‘Caged Bird’ and ‘Still I Rise.’ An analysis of these poems reveals that
Estrella’s development is portrayed through Viramontes’ selection of detail, specifically choosing tools and Perfecto Flores. The first representation of Viramontes’ selection of detail is Estrella’s opinion of the tools. In the beginning of the excerpt, Estrella describes the tools as “confusing and foreign” symbolizing her struggle with literacy and understanding her culture. In the end, Estrella realizes the “power of [the tool’s] function” representing her knowledge of the alphabet and its importance in reading. The second representation of Viramontes’ selection of detail is Estrella’s opinion of Perfecto Flores. In the beginning, Estrella is confused about Perfecto, asking “so what is this about?” This symbolizes her confusion with the alphabet and her teachers’ view of dirtiness. In the end, Perfecto’s purpose becomes clear through his “job well done.” Perfecto’s clarity represents Estrella’s knowledge of the
In the novel, In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez, the life changing stories of the Mirabal sisters from the Dominican Republic come to light. One of the sisters, Minerva Mirabal, is quite a unique character in the fact that she is audacious and fearless but at the same time she is also caring and amiable when she knows what is equitable or not. One way that we see the considerate side of Minerva is when she agrees to meet and help the other daughters of her father go through school. The construction of Minerva’s character comes shortly after she meets her other sisters for the first time and possibly changed her to who she became by the end of the novel.
I chose to write the paper as a timeline of Maya Angelou’s life. I started with birth, and concluded with present day, as Maya is still alive. Maya Angelou is not only a poet, but an author, activist, professor, and screenplay written. Maya Angelou was
A lot of people think education is just something you get in school, but in reality education comes from different places and people not just school and teachers. For example, way before I started school I was already being educated by my parents, they taught me how to eat, behave, use the bathroom, talk, and a lot of other things that help out in life.
There was a frequent reference to “a poet” whose work was widely respected in this novel. The Count de Satigny (who was Esteban Trueba’s ‘suitable’ choice of a husband for Blanca) referred to the work of the poet as “the best poetry ever written, and nothing could compare to it”. When Jaime and Nicholas became adults, the poet became more widely accepted as Clara had formerly predicted the first time she heard him recite in his ‘telluric voice’ in one of her literary soireés. It was evident that the poet lived and wrote about the right of the citizens to live their lives the way they wanted to, making their own decisions and expressing their own opinions without being controlled. For this reason, the funeral of such a poet became “the symbolic burial of freedom”.