| |
|
 Visitors Recommend
|
|
|
 Mexican Sketches (Croquis
Mexicanos)
|
As a former schoolteacher and journalist
who was also a poet and diplomat, Mistral had a deep knowledge
of Mexico, where she was invited to collaborate in the post-Revolutionary
educational reform of 1922-1924 by Mexican education minister
Jose Vasconcelos. Mistral, then aged 33, had never been outside
of Chile before, but she turned her full attention to the peoples,
cultures, customs, arts and politics of Mexico. She reveals the
extraordinary moments that Mexico was living as artists and writers
from throughout the land, and in many cases from abroad, sought
to document this remarkable moment in the history of a nation with
a long, much evident indigenous and colonial past, to create awareness
of the future, and to indicate the need for arts and cultures to
form an important part of any readers' consciousness. Gabriela
Mistral continued to write about Mexico throughout her many travels
and long career. In 1948-1950 she returned to Mexico where she
again described the changes that the intervening decades had brought.
Mistral has a clear eye that sees to the depth of peoples and places;
she is also extremely well-informed, and her writing is clear,
brief, conversational, yet full of emotion.
/Elizabeth Horan, 49, United States |
|
Tala |
Extraordinary wide-ranging poetry, providing
a sense of the deep and broad experience of the lands and peoples
of Latin America, and of Mediterranean Europe seen from the perspective
of this Chilean woman, the first Latin American to win the Nobel
Prize in Literature. Reveals a human side to the modern histories of
Mexico and Spain, between the Mexican Revolution and the Spanish
Civil War, events that the poet knew intimately from living in
these lands. Communicates compassion for human geography and deep
experience of the complex cultural ecology of the Americas.
/Elizabeth Horan, 49, United States |
|
Tell us about your favorite! » |
|
|
|
Printer Friendly 
Comments & Questions
Tell a Friend 
