I don’t agree that all is lost in translation, but I think a great deal is lost, especially in poetry, where every word seems to hold a universe. Esp… - Marjorie Agosín

every writer – or every person that aspires to write – has to become a reader. There’s nothing more beautiful than engaging with a novel, a poem, or an essay. You should not write for others, you should write from the point of authenticity, from your own self, from what you know. You hope that others will be enriched by your writing, but you don’t write for financial reward, recognition, or hitting the “best-seller” list. If you are worried about these things, you’re a different writer, not so much committed to what I think really matters, which is to capture your own voice, to release it and to share it. The most important, what we all struggle with, but is essential, is to be ourselves. As writers, as humans, as friends – to be ourselves.

I don't by any ways believe that we are the chosen people—but what is so amazing is how we have blossomed in the diaspora and that we are still here as a people in spite of centuries of discrimination and genocide, even from the expulsion of Spain or even before the destruction of the second temple. And I think what has kept the Jews together is the idea of home and the idea of memory, which is the ideas that I write about: home as an inner center, and memory as giving voice to the invisible and becoming a witness.

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.