“Killers and killed all”: Luis Felipe Fabre’s Sor Juana y otros monstruos
Sor Juana In és de la Cruz died in 1695 but has had endless potential for reanimation. To her contemporaries, she was the mysterious nun who wrote impenetrable poetry and searing critiques of the church for its treatment of women’s education. In the preface to one of her works, the monk Pedro del SantÃsimo Sacramento dubbed Sor Juana a “Monstruo de las mujeres y prodigio mexicano” (“Monster among women and Mexican prodigy”). To readers today, she is Sor Juana, “F énix de Am érica,” “Musa D écima,” the proto-feminist, Baroque poetess of colonial Mexico – in short, an all-around Latin-American legend.
By Rivky Mondal.