Sor Juana's Second Dream
By Alicia Gaspar de Alba

ISBN 0-8263-2091-0
$24.95
UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO PRESS
AUGUST 1999

Alicia Gaspar de Alba's first novel has just been released this Fall by the University of New Mexico Press.  Mixing fiction with Sor Juana's own words and poems, and drawing on the most recent Sor Juana scholarship, this 465-page novel creates the most full-bodied portrait of Mexico's Tenth Muse to date, openly exploring the seventeenth-century nun's sexual, political, and intellectual inclinations.

"This bold novel unravels the mystery and complexity of the woman Carlos Fuentes calls 'the first great Latin American poet.'  Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (1648-1695), poet, playwright, rhetorician, and musician, is often equated with Sapppho, the lesbian poet whom Plato baptized the 'Tenth Muse."  The Mexican nun has fascinated readers around the world for centuries as scholars have attempted to understand her brilliance, her feminism, the affairs of her heart, her decision to enter a convent at the beginning of her luminous intellectual career."

"Juana Ramirez de Asbaje, an illegitimate criolla, is sixteen when word of her self-taught erudition travels to the palace in Mexico city and she becomes an attendant to Dona Leonor Carreto, Marquesa de Mancera. Wanting only to study, confused by her love for la Marquesa, and loathe to marry, in five years Juana becomes Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz in the Convent of Santa Paula of the Order of San Jeronimo. There, her quill becomes her salvation and damnation as her notoriety mounts with each new artistic commission.   Popular with court and clergy, she receives a stream of guests at the convent, among them la Condesa de Paredes, who becomes Sor Juana's intimate friend.  More than two decades, later, after brilliantly defending her right to think, teach, and write, Sor Juana appears before the Inquistion and abruptly withdraws from the spotlight."

"This remarkable novel about a remarkable woman will enlighten a new generation of readers, and stoke the interest of devotees who already are captivated by the inspiring Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz."

"Beautfully written, without doubt the best book I have read this year. A masterpiece."

-- Greg Sarris, author of Watermelon Nights

 

Gaspar de Alba is an associate professor in Chicana/o Studies with the UCLA César E. Chávez Instructional Center in Interdisciplinary Chicana and Chicano Studies. Her previous works include Chicano Art: Inside/Outside The Master's House (University of Texas Press, 1998), The Mystery of Survival and Other Stories (Bilingual Press, 1993), and "Beggar on the Cordoba Bridge," collection of poems in Three Times A Woman: Chicana Poetry (Bilingual Press, 1989).