Cartographies: Meditations on Travel

Cartographies: Meditations on Travel - Paperback

$25.87
$25.87
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Cartographies: Meditations on Travel
  • Cartographies: Meditations on Travel
Cartographies: Meditations on Travel - Paperback

Cartographies: Meditations on Travel - Paperback

by Marjorie Agosin
$25.87
$25.87

Book Overview

by Marjorie Agosin (Author), Nancy Abraham Hall (Translator)

On the impulse behind Cartographies, Marjorie Agosín writes, "I have always wanted to understand the meaning of displacement and the quest or longing for home." In these lyrical meditations in prose and poetry, Agosín evokes the many places on four continents she has visited or called home. Recording personal and spiritual voyages, the author opens herself to follow the ambiguous, secret map of her memory, which "does not betray."

Agosín's journey begins in Chile, where she spent her childhood before her family left in the early days of the Pinochet dictatorship. Of Santiago Agosín writes, "Day and night I think about my city. I dream the dream of all exiles." Agosín also travels to Prague and Vienna, ancestral homes of her grandparents, and to Valparaíso in Chile, which received them as immigrants. Kneeling among the yellow mounds at the Terezin concentration camp, where twenty-two of her relatives died, Agosín places "small stones, shrubs, the stuff of life on graves I did not recognize."

And then on through the Middle East, the Mediterranean, Europe, and the Americas . . . Everywhere, she is drawn to women in whose devotion and creativity she sees a deep vein of hope--from Julia, keeper of the synagogue at Rhodes, to the women potters in the Chilean town of Pomaire.

Agosín writes of diaspora, exile, and oppression, yet only to highlight the dignity and valor of those who find refuge in their humanity and their art, in community and tradition. Cartographies shows us what can be found when we journey with openness, as approachable to strangers as we are to ourselves.

Author Biography

Marjorie Agosin, a human rights activist and writer, is a professor of Spanish at Wellesley College. Her many books include "Dear Anne Frank," "A Cross and a Star," and "The Alphabet in My Hands." Agosin's honors include the Gabriela Mistral Medal of Honor for Lifetime Achievement, given by the Chilean government; the Letras de Oro prize; and the Latino Literature Prize.

Number of Pages: 160
Dimensions: 0.6 x 7.25 x 5.1 IN
Publication Date: April 15, 2007
ISBN9780820329529
Author Marjorie Agosin
PublisherUniversity of Georgia Press
GenreBiography and Travel
FormatPaperback
PublishedApril 2007
LanguageENG- English
Pages160
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

Biography & Autobiography Nonfiction Travel

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About Marjorie Agosin

Marjorie Agosín is the Pura Belpré Award-winning author of I Lived on Butterfly Hill and The Maps of Memory. Raised in Chile, her family moved to the United States to escape the horrors of the Pinochet takeover of their country. She has received the Letras de Oro Prize for her poetry, and her writings about--and humanitarian work for--women in Chile have been the focus of feature articles in The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and Ms. magazine. She has also won the Latino Literature Prize for her poetry. She is a Spanish professor at Wellesley College. Lee White lives with his wife and their three crazy cats in Portland, Oregon, and you can visit him online at LeeWhiteIllustration.com.

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