Gabriela Mistral Research Articles

Breaking the Bonds of Domination: Embodied Heroines, Rape Culture, and Possibilities of Resistance in Short Stories by Isabel Allende and Rosario Castellanos

This article explores representations of rape culture in short stories by two iconic Latin American women writers: Fleeting Friendships and Cooking Lesson by Rosario Castellanos (1925–74); and Revenge and The Judge’s Wife by Isabel Allende (born 1942). Though Castellanos and Allende have different theoretical and stylistic approaches, both writers initially present uncomfortable pictures of women’s disempowerment and sexuality. This, however, unease with women’s sexual agency interrogates, challenges, and ultimately subverts the rape script. To address the question of whether the heroines of the stories comply or resist sexual domination and violence, two related feminist theories of intersubjectivity and embodiment frame the analysis: Jessica Benjamin’s intersubjective space and Ann Cahill’s theory of intersubjectivity and embodiment. These models are placed firmly in the context of Latin American gender archetypes, such as La Malinche and La Virgen de Guadalupe, with cultural observations by Latin American writers like Octavio Paz and Gabriela Mistral.

All the Pretty Things

All the Pretty Things Aimee Parkison (bio) The Beautiful Anthology. Elizabeth Collins, ed. TNB Books. http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com. 264 pages; paper, $14.99, eBook, $9.99. From crazy beautiful to beautiful ugly and the many shades of beauty in between, The Beautiful Anthology examines the politics, sensations, and life-altering consequences of the power of perception. The anthology also reveals the powerless sensations of being perceived. An intimate portrait of types and archetypes, contemporary obsessions and timeless fascinations, the collection delves into gray areas where dichotomies break down. Beauty blurs into ugliness as what was once ugly becomes beautiful. Essays, poems, and art offer a fresh perspective on diverse notions of beauty by revealing interpersonal and cultural conflicts. Unlike many recent works on contemporary myths surrounding the concept of beauty, this anthology focuses on both male and female perspectives. James D. Irwin’s “From The Venus de Milo to Porno Mags: The Evolution of Beauty, & Vice Versa” contemplates female desirability from Helen of Troy to the sex symbols of present day. In “Truth and Booty,” Tyler Stoddard Smith provides a hilarious cultural reality check, challenging quotations about beauty from Khalil Gibran, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Pablo Picasso, Gabriela Mistral, Helen Keller, and Albert Einstein. Going far beyond the traditional notion of the objectification of “beautiful women,” writers embrace the notion that beauty can be found not only in people (male, female, young, old, middle-aged, and of diverse races and cultures) but also in everyday objects. Steve Sparshott’s essay “Fin” proves that beauty can be found in unexpected places, even in a men’s restroom with its elegant sculptural design of fin-shaped urinal dividers. In “The Line Waver,” Greg Olear questions the popular aesthetics responsible for a McMansion’s garish windowed entryway and predicts that consumers will enter a new phase: the rejection of perfection. Careful not to fall into pop-culture snares, Matthew Baldwin explores male body image and finds “The Form within the Stone.” Celebrating the joys of sportsmanship, J. E. Fishman discovers masculine beauty in “Spinning” through a tennis miracle, where a perfectly masterful serve by a student of the game shocks his teacher. Poetry becomes the focus of diverse notions of beauty with Uche Ogbuji’s reflective analysis in “21st Century Beauty in Poetry.” Ogbuji reveals the way literature must evolve along with personal and cultural preferences as diversity and technology change the tastes of an increasingly global population connected by social media, information, and travel. In “No Animals or Insects Were Tortured or Killed in the Making of This Poem,” Rich Ferguson exudes confident musicality, exploring linguistic freedom with the beauty of radioactive language. Judy Prince’s heart-pounding “Summate” traces the journey of a hand moving over a lover’s body, creating a map of touch as silky skin meets the sea. Stephen Walter’s sensual poem “Upland Fall” transforms natural images of changing seasons into a poignant allegory encompassing male and female voices wondering about the splendor of natural love that fades even as it’s encountered. Catherine Tufariello’s poem “Meditation in Middle Age” reveals how the loss of physical beauty through aging allows a person to see what was once lost in the imprisonment of vanity. Writers such as Zoe Zolbrod and Nora Burkey explore international experiences with beauty. In “Pai Foot,” Zolbrod’s trip to Thailand offers unique erotic imagery in a glimpse of a young Thai man’s thorn-pierced foot. In “The Politics of Beauty,” Nora Burkey writes about teaching young female students in Cambodia, where politically motivated views of beauty threaten to rob girls of cultural freedom. Taking on the issue of race, Angela Tung’s “Blemished” provides an unflinchingly honest portrait of growing up as an Asian girl surrounded by images of whiteness. Tung reveals how having friends of different races and cultures sometimes impacts self-image in childhood. A more comforting view of beauty is found in familial experiences and universal rites of passage in growing up and growing old. In Victoria Patterson’s “The Beautiful,” beauty is discovered in unique expressions of kinship. In Robin Antalek’s “Inked,” a mother finds beauty in a daughter’s personal expression through body art. In...

Cohesión social como programa arquitectónico: genealogías tentativas del edificio UNCTADIII/CCMGM

The Centro Cultural Gabriela Mistral is a singularity in the Chilean architecture, but this is not an isolated project. The author offers a genealogy for the ideological background of this building.

El discurso de lo éxtimo en "Locas mujeres" de Gabriela Mistral

Este artículo se propone realizar una interpretación de los desvaríos presentes en el sujeto femenino inscrito en la sección Locas mujeres del libro Lagar (1954) y Lagar II (1991) de la poeta chilena Gabriela Mistral. La hipótesis de nuestro trabajo sostiene que la fragmentación del hablante es la causa de su desvarío, en tanto desconocimiento de sí mismo como un otro, a la vez que del otro mismo. Lo extimo responde a un neologismo lacaniano cuyo sentido marca la relación con un estado del sujeto despojado, extranjero de sí mismo, en donde el otro es una alteridad infranqueable, donde lo íntimo se torna ajeno. Este conflicto traza un estado de locura que es, no obstante, la oportunidad para resignificar el desvarío como la afirmación de la diferenca. La introyección de lo heterogéneo en el sujeto femenino implica el acto de ceder la palabra al otro. Con este trabajo pretendemos hacer un aporte en el restablecimiento de la Mistral como una poeta “subversiva” que rompe con la homogeneidad y univocidad del discurso.

Sili’nin ilk Nobel Ödülü alan ozanı Gabriela Mistral

Gabriela Mistral (1889-1975) was a Chilean poet,educator,diplomat who was the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1945. Some central themes in her poems are nature, love, a mother’s love. Mistral herself was of Aymara descent.

Politizar el paisaje, ilustrar la patria: nacionalismo, dictadura chilena y proyecto editorial

El presente articulo explora como el paisaje chileno fue reinventado por la ideologia nacionalista y por el Regimen Militar, a traves de la Editora Nacional Gabriela Mistral mientras esta fue del Estado (1973-1976), particularmente mediante sus ilustraciones. En el cruce analitico de la historia de las ideas politicas, de la cultura y de la iconografia, revisa como confluyeron demandas ideologicas y medios editoriales y visuales para «patrimonializar» politicamente el territorio. Finalmente, propone que el paisaje fue proyectado simbolicamente como base del patriotismo y como elemento «naturalizador» de una poblacion uniformada y del orden autoritario.

Madwomen: The Locas Mujeres Poems of Gabriela Mistral ‐ by Couch, R.

Madwomen: The Locas Mujeres Poems of Gabriela Mistral ‐ by Couch, R.

Cipango by Tomás Harris, Daniel Shapiro

Cipango by Tomás Harris, Daniel Shapiro

From the Western Door to the Lower West Side by Eric Gansworth

From the Western Door to the Lower West Side by Eric Gansworth

Desafiando la realidad laboral: programa de capacitación laboral para personas con discapacidad intelectual

This paper presents a Labor Program for the Intelectual Disability that is taking place at the Escuela Gabriela Mistral. Its goal is to favor the sociolaboral integration of its students inside the community. It tries to demonstrate that, even with low resources, an interdisciplinary working group may establish nets that will accept this people, thus allowing them to join the labor world in good conditions.

Queering the Cosmic Race

Despite their differences in place and time, the woman-centered Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral and the Chicana lesbian feminist writer Gloria Anzaldúa both looked to a transnational intellectual American history that frequently connected discourses of esotericism, indigenismo, and mestizaje. My comparative approach shows how both women used these discourses as a way to reconceptualize the subjectivity of the queer, indigenousidentified mestiza in a modern world. Notions of a new cosmic consciousness achieved via racial synthesis echo through twentieth-century Latin American and Chicana/o texts; theosophical ideas about race and spirit were deeply influential in Mistral’s writing and beliefs, and theosophy in turn informed the New Age feminist spirituality that helped shape Anzaldúa’s work. Outlining a history of the connections between these esoteric beliefs and those of mestizaje, and indigenismo, I show how Mistral and, later, Anzaldúa inherited and rewrote these notions by incorporating them into a queer sensibility.

Why the Arts Make Sense in Education

Art is not a very new idea. Our ancestors knew the arts were synonymous with survival. We created art to communicate emotions: our passions, jealousies, and enduring conflicts. We designed pageants to dramatize the passing of seasons and other more temporal events. Daily life, communication, and rituals were circumscribed and delineated in a range of artistic expressions. We went into battle with the sounds of trumpets, piccolos, and drums all over the globe. We buried our dead with song and even dance. We created theater that proposed solutions to our woes. We drew pictures of our kings and queens, and also cave drawings to tell the history of our day. Was this our primitive form of expression, or were we informing future generations in a way that language will never do alone? In short, the performing and visual arts have been the foundation of our recorded existence. I believe the arts are key to how we educate ourselves. I have spent 30 years in public urban education working in the arts (specifically theater) as well as teaching history, Spanish, and math. I have also been a high school principal for quite some time. I now have the privilege of leading one of the most exciting high schools in urban America--the Boston Arts Academy (BAA). BAA sits in an old brick warehouse in central Boston in the shadow of Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox. The student body of BAA reflects the diversity of our city and school system. We have 420 students in grades 9-12. Our students are 52% African-American, 25% Hispanic or Latino, 21% white, and 2% Asian-American. Over 50% come from homes where English is spoken as a second language. About 60% qualify for free and reduced lunch, which is the poverty indicator for the federal government. The students are chosen on the basis of their interest in and passion for the arts. There are no academic requirements for entrance. In fact, over 13% of the students have a learning disability. Yet, the school has established a remarkable record of acceptance to college of more than 95%. From its inception, BAA has had a dual curriculum: arts and academics. The importance of teaching the arts for art's sake has been a given from the school's beginning. Of enormous importance was the belief that studying, making, and integrating art into academic subjects would vividly engage students of widely varying abilities and thus increase enormously their success in high school. We integrate the arts and academics into many classroom experiences. For example, imagine a math class in which students are working with a composer on syncopation in order to deepen their understanding of the quadratic equation they are studying. In Spanish classes, students study Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Gabriela Mistral, or Celia Cruz. They research these famous Latin American artists and scholars and then present or enact them in costume, often with props, and with a deep sense of their history and context. And, what a meaningful way to learn a language. Our visual arts students are exposed to Spanish when, for example, they are taught by an artist in residence from Mexico who communicates solely in Spanish. In engineering classes, BAA students are introduced to math and science principles by learning how to design and create a container of their choice. The array of belt, cell phone, and CD holders that young people can imagine and produce is impressive. Students then work with a visual arts teacher to produce brochures and advertisements for their containers. They add more levels of intellectual and creative learning to their projects while strengthening their reading and writing skills. We are committed to empowering students to be active learners. The BAA is a very lively place, filled with the sounds of students creating, working, and rehearsing throughout the day, into the evening, and on weekends. One also can note how the high level of student engagement in arts courses carries over to the humanities and math, writing and science. …

A History of Christianity in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, 1450-1990: A Documentary Sourcebook (review)

Reviewed by: A History of Christianity in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, 1450-1990: A Documentary Sourcebook Brian Stanley A History of Christianity in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, 1450–1990: A Documentary Sourcebook. Edited by Klaus Koschorke, Frieder Ludwig, and Mariano Delgado, in cooperation with Roland Spliesgart. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. 2007. Pp. xxxiv, 426. $35.00 paperback. ISBN 978-0-802-82889-7.) Syllabuses in ecclesiastical history are making slow progress toward the incorporation of the Christian histories of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. [End Page 741] Documentary sources for the church history of these continents have, however, remained comparatively inaccessible to students. The English edition of this excellent sourcebook, which was first published in German by Neukirchener Verlag in 2004, will therefore be welcomed by many university and seminary teachers. The editors are to be congratulated on the range of the extracts selected. Each document or cluster of documents is prefaced by a brief contextual introduction and followed by bibliographical information and suggestions for further reading. The extracts vary in length from a few lines (such as the first document, which records the Italian Nicolò Conti's impressions of the "Nestorian" Christians of Malabar in the early-fifteenth century) to three pages (for example, Bernadino de Sahagún's account of the religious dialogue in 1524 between the twelve Franciscans of the Mexico mission and Aztec priests and noblemen). Inevitably, the reader wishes that some documents could be reproduced at greater length: as is the case of the brief extract from the Kairos document of 1985, which is so heavily punctuated with elisions that students will find it difficult to grasp the argument of these radical critics of apartheid. The sequence of documents is, however, frequently illuminating. Students of the genesis of liberation theology, for example, will be led from Camilo Torres to Populorum progressio, on to Medellín 1968, and then to Gutiérrez and Câmara. A challenge confronting the editors was how to compensate for the overwhelming preponderance of male over female sources, especially in the earlier centuries. In this respect the selection is a little disappointing. The index of individuals includes only four female entries (excluding the Virgin of Guadalupe): Queen Isabella of Castile; Juana Inés de La Cruz, the seventeenth-century Mexican poet and defender of women's learning; Ranavalona I, queen of Madagascar and defender of Malagasy tradition against missionaries in the 1830s; and Gabriela Mistral, Chilean supporter of social Christianity in the 1920s. There is no room for Kimpa Vita (Beatrice), a controversial figure in the Bakongo Antonian movement in the first decade of the eighteenth century, nor for Alice Lenshina Mulenga, founder of the Lumpa Church among the Bemba in the 1950s. The terminal date of 1990 chosen for the volume largely, but not wholly, explains the nonappearance of African or Asian feminist theologians. The selection of documents maintains an admirable ecumenical breadth, with the exception of the coverage of Pentecostalism in Latin America, which is allocated only two extracts (on Guatemala and Honduras) and introduced by a manifestly unsympathetic commentary, giving the reader the impression that Pentecostalism is of no significance for the liberation of the Latin American poor. There are a number of mistakes. It is not the case that the East India Company before 1813 refused to allow all missionary activity in its territories (p. 56). Daniel Wilson, Anglican bishop of Calcutta, is referred to as "Henry" (p. [End Page 742] 63).Walter Medhurst was not American but English (p. 83). Henry Morton Stanley was not American but Welsh (p. 195). The Phelps Stokes Fund has become the Phelps-Stoke Institute, and A. G. Fraser has become Frazer (pp. 232–33). Gandhi's first name was Mohandas, not "Mahatma" (pp. 109, 425). There are occasional problems with cross-referencing and indexing: thus the index and the cross-references to Simon Kimbangu refer readers to the wrong documents. It is hoped that these and other errors can be corrected in a future edition, for this book deserves to have a long and useful life. Brian Stanley St. Edmund's College, Cambridge Copyright © 2008 The Catholic University of America Press

Redefining the American Revolutionary: Gabriela Mistral on José Martí

This essay criticizes the historical investment of Martí's readers in a discourse that values conservative, sexually unambiguous femininity and masculinity. The essay grapples with the vituperative register of José Martí's misogyny in order to reveal another version of the American revolutionary. Drawing on one of his earliest feminist critics, Gabriela Mistral, I show how corporeal tropes in Martí's rhetoric betray instances of empathy with emerging alternative practices of femininity and masculinity. Assisted by Mistral's overlooked and overtly gendered critique, this essay limns a tropical Martí — an embodied, sensual, demonumentalized poet who plays with language. In readings of Mistral's several essays devoted to Martí, the essay shows how Mistral's Martí represents an alternative to the heroic masculinism and violent militarism of a longstanding revolutionary American tradition.

Madwomen: the "Locas mujeres" poems of Gabriela Mistral

Madwomen: the "Locas mujeres" poems of Gabriela Mistral

Edenic Narratives in the Nature Poetry of Chile's Pablo Neruda and Gabriela Mistral

Edenic Narratives in the Nature Poetry of Chile's Pablo Neruda and Gabriela Mistral

Reconstruyendo el camino de Ercilla... Bello, Mistral y Neruda

Si los personajes de La Araucana han ocupado un visible espacio en la literatura contemporánea, sin embargo su creador, Alonso de Ercilla, es ante todo una figura histórica que ha sido reivindicada en textos de análisis crítico, a excepción de algunos poemas y obras teatrales. En este artículo, analizo cómo los trabajos de Andrés Bello, Gabriela Mistral y Pablo Neruda ponen su objetivo en destacar la nobleza moral del Alonso de Ercilla, y en resaltar su figura como inaugurador de un discurso crítico americano en la poesía escrita en castellano. A esos valores Neruda añade la visión de Ercilla no sólo como inventor sino también como “libertador” de Chile. En definitiva, la recuperación contemporánea de Ercilla por todos ellos estaba trazando un camino que canonizó a Ercilla como inaugurador de la literatura chilena.

"Mulher-raça": a reprodução da nação em Gabriela Mistral

O artigo desmascara a posição pública assumida por Gabriela Mistral como defensora dos povos indígenas, argumentando que no âmbito privado sua posição foi absolutamente oposta a qualquer afirmação sexual pública não-normativa. A autora sugere três operações críticas para a leitura da obra de Mistral sobre o sujeito da "raça" latino-americana: a recusa da negritude (Mistral reage a ela com ansiedade, sexualização e patologização, ou seja, com atitudes brancas estereotipadas), a cumplicidade da linguagem da diversidade com as práticas do pensamento supremacista branco (evidenciada em sua correspondência) e o papel da queerness no nacionalismo racializado de Mistral (sua atitude queer acabou ajudando a aprimorar a heteronormatividade e o projeto racial latino-americanista).

Recasting the Role of the Intellectual: Chilean Poet Gabriela Mistral

The life and work of Gabriela Mistral, the first Latin American writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1945, is examined as an example of how difficult it was for women to win recognition as intellectuals in 20th-century Latin America. Despite an international reputation for erudition and political commitment, Mistral has traditionally been represented in stereotypically gendered terms as the ‘Mother’ and ‘Schoolteacher’ of the Americas, and it has been repeatedly claimed that she was both apolitical and anti-intellectual. This article contests such claims, arguing that she was not only committed to fulfilling the role of an intellectual, but that she also elaborated a critique of the dominant male Latin American view of intellectuality, probing the boundaries of both rationality and nationality as constructed by male Euro-Americans. In so doing, she addressed many of the crucial issues that still confront intellectuals today in Latin America and elsewhere.

Violence and Difference in Gabriela Mistral's Short Stories (1904-1911)

Gabriela Mistral's uncharacteristic short stories, which she began writing at the age of fourteen, demonstrate the Chilean poet's need to express violence through the brief narrative genre. Mistral wrote six short stories and in all of them she blurs the boundaries between gender and violence. For the sexes to be defined, Mistral seems to use violence as a means to distinguish them. When women suffer through men's actions, both gender performances become more pronounced and defined: women and men exist precisely because of men's harmful actions. A shift of perspective and agency occurs when men fail to recognize their own behavior and blame women for their fate. Both sexes lose their subjectivity (or sexuality) and become so intertwined that their differences are no longer perceptible. The two stories analyzed in this essay are the first story Mistral wrote, El perdon de una victima and her last, El rival. In both, Mistral demonstrates her wariness to define a norm for heterosexual relationships, while at the same time, she attempts to discern female difference.