Wikipedia

Marjorie Agosín

Marjorie Agosín (June 15, 1955 - March 10, 2025) was a Chilean-American writer. She won notability for her outspokenness for women's rights in Chile.[1] The United Nations honored her for her work on human rights.[2] The Chilean government awarded her with the Gabriela Mistral Medal of Honor for Life Achievement in 2000.[3] She has been a recipient of the Belpré Medal. In the United States, she received the Letras de Oro, the Latino Literary Prize, and the Peabody Award, together with the United Nations Leadership Award in Human Rights.[4]

Marjorie Agosín
Born(1955-06-15)June 15, 1955
Bethesda, Maryland, U.S.
Died10 March 2025(2025-03-10) (aged 69)
Wellesley, Massachusetts
OccupationWriter
LanguageSpanish
Alma materIndiana University Bloomington (PhD)
GenrePoetry, essay
Notable awardsGabriela Mistral Medal
Belpré Medal
Peabody Award

Early life and education

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Agosín was born in 1955 to Jewish Chilean parents, Moisés and Frida Agosín, in Bethesda, Maryland, where her father Moisés was completing graduate studies.[5] At the age of three months her family returned with her to Chile, growing up in Santiago de Chile and at the family's summer house in El Quisco[6] where the poet Pablo Neruda was an occasional guest.[7] While she was raised to appreciate her Jewish heritage, her family also appreciated the dominant Catholic culture of Chile. Her aunt even organized Easter Egg hunts for her and her mother adored the beauty of the Catholic churches in Chile.[8] Agosín attended the Hebrew School in Santiago, Chile. In 1970 she left with her family to live in the United States, where her father became a professor of chemistry in Athens, Georgia; after the Chilean coup d'état of September 11, 1973, the move became permanent.[9]

Career

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Agosín studied in Georgia, and later attended Indiana University Bloomington, where she obtained her PhD in Latin American Literature.[10] After receiving her degree, her first job was as an assistant professor at Wellesley College, the same Massachusetts women's college at which, at the age of thirty-seven, she became one of the youngest women ever to obtain the rank of full professor in the history of the institution, and at which, after more than twenty years, she continued teaching.[11]

She edited the anthology These Are Not Sweet Girls: Poetry by Latin American Women (White Pine Press, 1991), featuring newly translated poems by Gabriela Mistral, Rosario Castellanos, Giannina Braschi, Olga Nolla, Julia de Burgos, Violeta Parra, Cristina Peri Rossi, and other Latina poets.[12]

Agosín began to write poetry in Spanish when she was ten years old, and although she spoke both English and Yiddish, she wrote her extensive work in Spanish.[13]

Agosín has been a prolific author: her published books, including those she has written as well as those she has edited, number over eighty.[14] She has published several books of fiction, among them two collections of short stories: La Felicidad (1991) and Las Alfarenas (1994).[15] Agosín's series of memoirs began with a book about her mother's life in the south of Chile, A Cross and a Star: Memoirs of a Jewish Girl in Chile (1995).[16] The later two volumes related the story of her father's life, Always from Somewhere Else (1998), and Agosín's own story, The Alphabet in My Hands (2000).[17] In each of these books, the prevailing theme is that of the Jewish immigrant who is trying to find a place in Latin American society.[18] She contributed the piece "Women of smoke" to the 1984 anthology Sisterhood Is Global: The International Women's Movement Anthology, edited by Robin Morgan.[19] Her two most recent books are both poetry collections, The Light of Desire / La Luz del Deseo, translated by Lori Marie Carlson (Swan Isle Press, 2009), and Secrets in the Sand: The Young Women of Juárez, translated by Celeste Kostopulos-Cooperman (White Pine Press, 2006), about the female homicides in Ciudad Juárez.[20] She taught Spanish language and Latin American literature at Wellesley College.[21]

Agosín died on March 10, 2025, at her home in Wellesley, Massachusetts.[22]

Selected published works

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  • Conchali, (Senda Nueva de Ediciones, 1980), ISSN 0145-8973[23]
  • Brujas Y Algo Más: Witches and Other Things, (Latin American Literary Review Press, 1984), ISBN 978-0-935480-16-0[24]
  • Violeta Parra: santa de pura greda : un estudio de su obra poética, (with Inés Dölz-Blackburn), (Planeta, 1988), ISBN 9562470164[25]
  • La Felicidad (Editorial Cuarto Propio, 1991) ISBN 9781877727344
  • Sargazo (White Pine Press, 1993) ISBN 978-1-877727-27-6
  • La Alfareras (Editorial Cuarto Propio, 1994) ISBN 9789562600637
  • Tapestries of hope, threads of love, (University of New Mexico Press, 1996) ISBN 0-8263-1692-1
  • A Woman's Gaze: Latin American Women Artists (White Pine Press, 1998) ISBN 1-877727-85-7
  • The Alphabet in My Hands: A Writing Life, translated by Nancy Abraham Hall (Rutgers University Press, 2000)
  • Always from Somewhere Else: A Memoir of My Chilean Jewish Father, (Editor), (Feminist Press, 2000), ISBN 1-55861-256-4
  • Women, gender, and human rights: a global perspective, (Rutgers University Press, 2001), ISBN 0-8135-2983-2
  • Secrets in the Sand: The Young Women of Juárez (White Pine Press, 2006), ISBN 1-893996-47-6
  • The Light of Desire / La Luz del Deseo, translated by Lori Marie Carlson (Swan Isle Press, 2010), ISBN 978-0-9748881-7-0
  • I Lived on Butterfly Hill, (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, 2014) ISBN 978-1-4169-5344-9

References

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  1. ^ Wellesley College Public Affairs Profile: Marjorie Agosín Archived May 14, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
  2. ^ Wellesley College Public Affairs Profile: Marjorie Agosin
  3. ^ "OTORGA ORDEN AL MERITO DOCENTE Y CULTURAL GABRIELA MISTRAL EN GRADO DE GRAN OFICIAL A LA DOCTORA MARJORIE AGOSIN". Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional de Chile. July 24, 2000. Retrieved July 8, 2017.
  4. ^ Oboler., Suzanne (2005). The Oxford encyclopedia of Latinos & Latinas in the United States. González, Deena J. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 019518842X. OCLC 62270754.
  5. ^ Memorial de una escritura: aproximaciones a la obra de Marjorie Agosín
  6. ^ Behar, Ruth. "Marjorie Agosín". The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women. Jewish Women's Archive. Retrieved March 27, 2025.
  7. ^ Behar, Ruth; Agosín, Marjorie (June 19, 2023). "The Languages of Belonging: A Conversation Between Ruth Behar and Marjorie Agosín | Jewish Book Council". www.jewishbookcouncil.org. Retrieved March 27, 2025.
  8. ^ Marjorie., Agosín (2000). The alphabet in my hands : a writing life. Hall, Nancy Abraham. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. ISBN 081352704X. OCLC 41076239.
  9. ^ Oboler., Suzanne (2005). The Oxford encyclopedia of Latinos & Latinas in the United States. González, Deena J. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 019518842X. OCLC 62270754.
  10. ^ Oboler., Suzanne (2005). The Oxford encyclopedia of Latinos & Latinas in the United States. González, Deena J. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 019518842X. OCLC 62270754.
  11. ^ Oboler., Suzanne (2005). The Oxford encyclopedia of Latinos & Latinas in the United States. González, Deena J. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 019518842X. OCLC 62270754.
  12. ^ "These Are Not Sweet Girls: Poetry by Latin American Women. - Free Online Library". www.thefreelibrary.com. Retrieved October 26, 2020.
  13. ^ Oboler., Suzanne (2005). The Oxford encyclopedia of Latinos & Latinas in the United States. González, Deena J. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 019518842X. OCLC 62270754.
  14. ^ Library of Congress Online Catalog > Marjorie Agosín
  15. ^ Oboler., Suzanne (2005). The Oxford encyclopedia of Latinos & Latinas in the United States. González, Deena J. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 019518842X. OCLC 62270754.
  16. ^ Oboler., Suzanne (2005). The Oxford encyclopedia of Latinos & Latinas in the United States. González, Deena J. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 019518842X. OCLC 62270754.
  17. ^ Oboler., Suzanne (2005). The Oxford encyclopedia of Latinos & Latinas in the United States. González, Deena J. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 019518842X. OCLC 62270754.
  18. ^ Oboler., Suzanne (2005). The Oxford encyclopedia of Latinos & Latinas in the United States. González, Deena J. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 019518842X. OCLC 62270754.
  19. ^ "Table of Contents: Sisterhood is global". Catalog.vsc.edu. Archived from the original on December 8, 2015. Retrieved October 15, 2015.
  20. ^ Reinares, Laura Barberán (2010). "Globalized Philomels: State Patriarchy, Transnational Capital, and the Fermicides on the US- Mexican Border in Roberto Bolaño's 2666". South Atlantic Review. 75 (4): 51–72, on 69. JSTOR 41635653.
  21. ^ Wellesley College > Department of Spanish Faculty Archived May 17, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
  22. ^ Behar, Ruth. "A Tribute to Marjorie Agosín". Latin American Jewish Studies Association. Retrieved March 27, 2025.
  23. ^ "Conchalí (Senda Poetica) by Agosin, Marjorie: Good Soft cover (1980) 1st Edition, Signed by Author(s) | El Gato de Papel". www.abebooks.com. Retrieved March 5, 2025.
  24. ^ Alarcón, Norma (1985). "Review of Brujas y algo más/Witches and Other Things". Chiricú. 4 (1): 9–12. ISSN 0277-7223.
  25. ^ "Violeta Parra: santa de pura greda : un estudio de su obra poética". esploro.libs.uga.edu. Retrieved March 5, 2025.
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