Gabriela Mistral

Gabriela Mistral was born in Vicuña, Chile. Her early life was traumatic. She was brought up by her mother, after her father left the family when she was 3 years old. When she was 17, she met and fell in love with Romeo Ureta. However, three years later he committed suicide. More tragedy was to strike later, when a nephew also committed suicide.


Despite these tragedies, Gabriela Mistral became a great poet and an international renowned figure in literature and education. She taught elementary and secondary school for many years until her poetry made her famous. She played an important role in the educational systems of Mexico and Chile, was active in cultural committees of the League of Nations, and was Chilean consul in Naples, Madrid, and Lisbon. She taught Spanish literature in the United States at Columbia University, Middlebury College, Vassar College, and at the University of Puerto Rico.


She was the first female Latin American poet to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1945. Mistral's works deal with the basic passion of love as seen in the various relationships of mother and offspring, man and woman, individual and humankind, soul and God.

                           


Moreover, Gabriela Mistral was a brave and determined who defended the rights of children, women, and the poor; the freedoms of democracy; and the need for peace in times of social, political, and ideological conflicts, not only in Latin America but in the whole world. She was a good example to people, a talented and clever woman.

With regard to her work, Mistral's writings are highly emotional. In her poems speak the abandoned woman and the jealous lover, the mother in a trance of joy and fear because of her delicate child, the teacher, the woman who tries to bring to others the comfort of compassion, the enthusiastic singer of hymns to America's natural richness, the storyteller, the mad poet possessed by the spirit of beauty and transcendence.

The love poems in memory of the dead, Sonetos de la muerte (1914), made her known throughout Latin America, but her first great collection of poems, Desolación (Despair), was not published until 1922. Her complete poetry was published in 1958.

Here we can see some of her poems: http://www.poemhunter.com/gabriela-mistral/poems/

A short documentary of Gabriela Mistral’s life: https://vimeo.com/7603796

Webgraphy:

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1945/mistral-bio.html
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/gabriela-mistral
http://www.biographyonline.net/poets/gabriela_mistral.html