These Are Not Sweet Girls: Poetry by Latin American Women

by Marjorie Agosín (Editor)

This reprint of a White Pine Press classic brings together an astonishing range of work from the turn of the century to the present. Despite cultural maxims encouraging them to be silent, women continue to speak, often through the language of poetry, where there is an abundance of intuition and the possibility of reclaiming power through language. In the work included here, we see how the common threads of courage and inventiveness can be woven into a bright tapestry of women’s voices that presents a true picture of a culture that must create its own history. Over fifty poets, including those well-known, such as Gabriela Mistral, Alfonsina Storni, and Cristina Peri Rossi, and those just emerging are included.

Marjorie Agosín, editor of the Secret Weavers series, is well-known as a poet, writer, and human rights activist. She is a professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.

Genres: Poetry, Anthologies, Womens

368 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2000

About the author

Marjorie Agosín was born in Maryland and raised in Chile. She and her parents, Moises and Frida Agosín, moved to the United States due to the overthrow of the Chilean government by General Pinochet's military coup. Coming from a South American country and being Jewish, Agosín's writings demonstrate a unique blending of these cultures.

Agosín is well known as a poet, critic, and human activist. She is also a well-known spokesperson for the plight and priorities of women in Third World countries. Her deep social concerns and accomplishments have earned her many awards and recognitions, and she has gained an international reputation among contemporary women of color.

Agosín, a passionate writer, has received critical acclaim for her poetry collections, her close reflections on her parents and family, and her multi-layered stories. Within every novel, story, or poem, she captures the very essence of Jewish women at their best. Agosín's works reveal the experiences of pain and anguish of Jewish refugees. She writes about the Holocaust as well as anti-Semitic events that occurred in her native land.

Agosín has many fascinating works and is recognized in both North and South America as one of the most versatile and provocative Latin American writers. Agosín became a writer to make a difference: "I wanted to change the world through peace and beauty," she said. Today she is not only a writer, but also a Spanish professor at Wellesley College.

Reviews

[Krista Stevens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of sex, violence, grief and living, dreaming and hoping.
Meditation on the Threshold by Rosario Castellanos
No, throwing yourself under a train like Tolstoy's Anna
is not the answer,
not hastening Maddame Bovary's arsenic
nor waiting for the angel with the javelin
to reach the parapets of Avila
before you tie the kerchief to your head
and begin to act.

Nor intuiting the laws of geometry,
counting the beams in your cell
like Sor Juana. The answer is not
to write while visitors arrive
in the Austen living room
nor to lock yourself in the attic
of some New England house
and dream, the Dickinson family Bible
beneath your spinster's pillow.

There must be some other way whose name is not Sappho
or Mesaline or Mary of Egypt
or Magdalene or Clemencia Isaura...

Another way of being free and human.

Another way of being.

[Dr. Melissa Vera · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing collection of poetry. It gives a good scope and breadth for an introduction to Latin American women poets.

[elise amaryllis · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5
this book was wonderful. some poetry i wasn’t a fan of, but it introduced me to so many amazing poets that i plan on reading more of.

poets & poems by then I enjoyed:
Dulce Maria Loynaz
- Last Days of Home
- XXX (!!!)
Delmira Augustini
- The Ineffable (!!!)
Idea Vilarino
- There is no hope (!!!)
- No (!!!)
- A Visitor
- Each afternoon
- How to shrug off
- How awful (!!!)
Cleminta Suarez
- Now that I have grown up, Mother
Adelia Prado
- Age
Alicia Galaz Vivar
- The Manifest
Gioconda Belli
- The Blood of Others
Ana Maria Rodas
- Poems from the Erotic Left
Teresa Calderon
- Exile
- Perspectives
Maejorie Agosin
- When she showed me her photograph
Belinda Zubicueta Carmona
- Tenderness
Giannina Braschi
- A letter comes and visits me
Alejandra Piznarnick
- XIV
Romelia Alarcon de Folgar
- Irreverent Epistle to Jesus Christ
- Nocturnal
Eunice Odio
- from Creation
Rosaria Ferre
- Ballerina
Violeta Parra
- I curse in the highest sky
- Song for a seed

really happy about learning all of these names. especially idea vilarino—i love her poems so much.

[Casey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing. Not something you will find in many bookstores but the translations, marvelous and the variety of poetry, outstanding. My favorite poem of the book is written by Marjorie Agosin a Chilean writer:

Memorial

Memory, like a piece of beautiful and imprecise canvas
accumulating the embers of wrath,
the beauties of an expansive tenderness that is
stretched
to the very base of a sword of faith which expands
to become a table where
everyone writes what he wants
or does not want to remember:
a blade of smooth wood where we can invent
maps of our most cherished possessions,
memory flying opposite the sky,
dark and luminous,
folded and always
transforming itself
into a necklace of words
strung between the captive stones
that cannot say anything.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had really high expectations for this anthology, and ended up not enjoying it nearly as much as I'd hoped. My real rating is a 2.5 but I rounded up. Overall, this anthology was well put together, with so many poets included from all over Latin America.

I enjoyed some of the poems that are included written by Dulce Maria Loynaz, Anabel Torres, Emma Sepulveda-Pulvirenti, Claribel Alegria, and Violeta Parra (her political poems).

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are too few anthologies like this one -- and Marjorie Agosín has done a fantastic job with this one.

[Willow Croft · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read the edition ed. by Marjorie Agosin

[Caitlyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

To completely steal a quote from another librarian (she gets FULL credit for this): these poems make you want to stand up and shout, and sit down and listen.