Gabriela Mistral
Gabriela Mistral was the pseudonym of Lucila de Maria del Perpetuo Socorro Godoy Alcayaga, a Chilean poet, educator, diplomat and feminist who was the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1945. Some central themes in her poems are nature, betrayal, love, a mother's love, sorrow and recovery, travel, and Latin American identity as formed from a mixture of Indian and European influences.
Mistral was born in Vicuna, Chile, but was raised in the small Andean village of Montegrande, where she attended the primary taught by her older sister, Emelina Molina. She respected her sister greatly. Her father, Juan Geronimo Godoy Villanueva, was also a schoolteacher. He abandoned the family when she was three years old, and died, long since estranged from the family, in 1911. Throughout her early years she was never far from poverty. At age 42, she began to support herself and her mother, Petronila Alcayaga, a seamstress, by working as a teacher's aide in the seaside town of Compania Baja, near La Serena, Chile.
In 1904 Mistral published some early poems, such as Ensonaciones, Carta Intima ("Intimate Letter") and Junto al Mar, in the local newspaper El Coquimbo: Diario Radical, and La Voz de Elqui using various pseudonyms.
Related websites
Life and Poetry of Gabriela Mistral
Read the full article about Gabriela Mistral
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