Marjorie Agosin

An eleven-year-old’s world is upended by political turmoil in this “lyrically ambitious tale of exile and reunification” (Kirkus Reviews) from an award-winning poet, based on true events in Chile. Celeste Marconi is a dreamer. She lives peacefully among friends and neighbors and family in the idyllic town of Valparaiso, Chile—until one day when warships are spotted in the harbor and schoolmates start disappearing from class without a word. Celeste doesn’t quite know what is happening, but one thing is clear: no one is safe, not anymore. The country has been taken over by a government that declares artists, protestors, and anyone who helps the needy to be considered “subversive” and dangerous to Chile’s future. So Celeste’s parents—her educated, generous, kind parents—must go into hiding before they, too, “disappear.” Before they do, however, they send Celeste to America to protect her. As Celeste adapts to her new life in Maine, she never stops dreaming of Chile. But even after democracy is restored to her home country, questions remain: Will her parents reemerge from hiding? Will she ever be truly safe again? Accented with interior artwork, steeped in the history of Pinochet’s catastrophic takeover of Chile, and based on many true events, this multicultural ode to the power of revolution, words, and love is both indelibly brave and heartwrenchingly graceful.

I Lived on Butterfly Hill

A full-color illustrated book that looks at Anne Frank's life through her eyes. Anne describes her journey from Germany to the Netherlands and her life in Amsterdam. We learn about her hopes and dreams for the future that was taken from her.

An Imagining of the Life of Anne Frank

Anne

In this unique memoir, renowned poet, fiction writer, critic, and activist Marjorie Agosin writes in the voice of her mother, Frida, the daughter of European Jewish immigrants, living in Chile in the years before, during, and after World War II. Frida recounts stories from her family's Jewish/Chilean history: of her father, who had to leave Vienna in 1920 because he fell in love with a Christian cabaret dancer; of her paternal grandmother, who came to Chile later with a number tattooed on her arm; and of her great grandmother, an immigrant from Odessa, who learned to speak Spanish in Chile and loved the language so much that she repeated its harmonious sounds even in her sleep. Frida's stories of the past soften the realities of present times, when some immigrants from Germany still display portraits of Hitler m their homes and Jews still remain, after two generations, strangers in their own land. These stories are permeated with the shadow of faraway war in Europe, which haunts Frida's dreams and is a vivid presence in the everyday life in this Chilean town. For Frida the cross and the star of the title come to define two worlds that are for her distinct, yet inexorably entwined. Agosin's poetic reflections reveal a culture and a landscape little-known outside of her native land, explore the boundaries of "voice", and create a moving testament to endurance and to the power of memory and of words.

Memoirs of a Jewish Girl in Chile

A Cross and a Star

In this evocative and emotional work, the poet, novelist, and human rights activist Marjorie Agosin pays homage to her great-grandmother, Helena Broder. As a young woman, Helena escaped Vienna to seek refuge in Chile, leaving shortly after the Night of Broken Glass in 1938 when the Nazi regime unleashed a campaign of violence, terror and destruction against the Jewish population. This book takes readers on Marjorie's journey through time and space, and across thresholds between life, death and dreams, to discover Helena's lost voice. This is not a linear journey, but one that braids together the past, the present, and the future, allowing Marjorie to give Helena, an exiled woman, a third home in the liminal space of memory and literature; a safe haven where she can be complete rather than fragmented, a place where her "exhausted suitcase" can finally rest. This touching collection of poems, in Marjorie Agosin's native Spanish together with Alison Ridley's delicate English translation, is accompanied by evocative images from the Chilean photographer Samuel Shats, as well as poignant memorabilia of Helena herself.

Braided Memories

Marjorie Agosín

Gabriela Mistral is the only Latin American woman writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. Even so, her extraordinary achievements in poetry, narrative, and political essays remain largely untold. Gabriela Mistral: The Audacious Traveler explores the complex legacy of Mistral and the ways in which her work continues to define the Americas. Gabriela Mistral: The Audacious Traveler is the first work to explore the totality of Mistral's vision and her political writings. It addresses her leadership as a representative of Chile during the drafting of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and her work on behalf of a unified American hemisphere. Throughout, she is depicted as a courageous social activist whose writings reveal a passionate voice for freedom and justice.

Marjorie Agosin

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