This America of Ours
This America of Ours
The Letters of Gabriela Mistral and Victoria Ocampo
2005 — Best Book Translation Prize – New England Council of Latin American Studies
Gabriela Mistral and Victoria Ocampo were the two most influential and respected women writers of twentieth-century Latin America. Mistral, a plain, self-educated Chilean woman of the mountains who was a poet, journalist, and educator, became Latin America's first Nobel Laureate in 1945. Ocampo, a stunning Argentine woman of wealth, wrote hundreds of essays and founded the first-rate literary journal Sur. Though of very different backgrounds, their deep commitment to what they felt was "their" America forged a unique intellectual and emotional bond between them.
This collection of the previously unpublished correspondence between Mistral and Ocampo reveals the private side of two very public women. In these letters (as well as in essays that are included in an appendix), we see what Mistral and Ocampo thought about each other and about the intellectual and political atmosphere of their time (including the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and the dictatorships of Latin America) and particularly how they negotiated the complex issues of identity, nationality, and gender within their wide-ranging cultural connections to both the Americas and Europe.
Meyer and Horan have done extraordinary and valuable work in collecting and editing the letters of Victoria Ocampo and Gabriela Mistral in This America of Ours. . . . Ocampo and Mistral’s exchanges often reveal their differing approaches to literature, politics, and feminism and, as such, provide an example of the richness and variety of women’s intellectual engagement in Latin America.
Elizabeth Horan is Professor and Chair of the Department of English at Arizona State University. Doris Meyer is Roman S. & Tatiana Weller Professor Emeritus of Hispanic Studies at Connecticut College and a Visiting Scholar at the University of New Mexico's Latin American and Iberian Institute.
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part One. Letters 1926-1939
- Part Two. Letters 1940-1952
- Part Three. Letters 1953-1956
- Appendix: Added Writings
- "Message to Victoria Ocampo in Argentina," by Gabriela Mistral
- "Victoria Ocampo," by Gabriela Mistral
- "About Gabriela," by Victoria Ocampo and Roger Caillois
- "And Lucila Who Spoke like a River," by Victoria Ocampo
- "Gabriela Mistral in Her Letters," by Victoria Ocampo
- "Victoria Ocampo on Her Friendship with Gabriela Mistral"
- Chronology
- Biographical Dictionary
- Works Cited
- Index
