It is so important to learn how other people live; to become familiar with a language that is not your own; to feel like a stranger. You will have gr… - Marjorie Agosín

The Latin American writer of the 1970s, like the journalist, cinematographer, and photographer, is the one who prevents the truth from disappearing, the one who searches for the testimony of eyewitnesses, of the forgotten ones, offering a taste of life and validity to the word. Written literature, oral testimonies, and public performances on forbidden streets demonstrate that Latin America hums with life despite the collective massacres, book burnings, and obligatory silence.

We are what we remember and we understand heritage and belonging through our own passion to remember. Home is a living scrap-book of memory that we carry as we move about, as we remember the vanquished and their respective passions and sorrows. Memory can never reside in abstraction. Memory must be cemented into concrete, must be worn like a dress, must be lived in like a home of differing levels, textures, and colors.

In the house where I grew up in Santiago de Chile I heard a Babel of whispers, songs, prayers, and languages. Spanish was my language, my mother tongue spoken in the fiestas, in the schools, and in the poetry books I loved and read out loud as poetry should be read. My maternal grandparents spoke German and Yiddish. My paternal grandparents spoke Russian and often sang to the music of a balalaika bought in a flea market at the outskirts of the city. At school I learned Hebrew and songs in Ladino. At first I seemed to be confused with too many languages, but as the years progressed all of these languages were and continue to be a part of my inheritance as a Jew, as a poet, and as a woman. It was truly enchanting to hear and feel the depth of these many languages that embedded the narratives of the Jewish people throughout our history-an ancient people carrying their prayers and their legacy across the earth.