how to become someone else-that's perhaps the greatest challenge for a translator because to become someone else is to become compassionate. To becom… - Marjorie Agosín

Maybe once you are an exile, you always are an exile. Always missing somewhere else, always carrying a bit from here and a bit from there and always with a bit of a broken heart. (p280)

Those devoted to the study of Latin American poetry can identify the names of poets such as Vicente Huidobro, Pablo Neruda, and César Vallejo, all twentieth century male poets. It is only because she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1945 that Gabriela Mistral's voice is not ignored. Male critics have often ascribed the poetry of women such as Mistral to the ideology that they represent; at other times, they have simply denied or ignored the literary production of women. The poetry of these women, created in patriarchal societies, has not achieved recognition within the canon of contemporary literature. In general, anthologies of Latin American poetry include very few women.

The possibilities of language reside in the possibilities of faith; they are a form of redeeming and correcting world history and paying tribute to life in all its wonder. These poems were written by a spirit that wishes to be part of a history that does not cover but on the contrary reveals and is clear in the blinding light of every silence.