| Description |
"Mapping a Legend for Ecofeminism" frames itself around the poetry and prose of Gabriela Mistral, and explores its function as a foundation for ecofeminism with particular regard to the theme of virginity. Mistral's work extends outward into dialectics with Mother Goddess figures, the Virgin Mary, the Virgin of Guadalupe, and Queen Elizabeth I. Each shows that it is impossible to divorce motherhood from pain-in raising children and in the act of giving birth itself, which translates from Spanish as "to give light." Poetic tropes of water, light, and nostalgia emerge in these dialectics to illuminate the breadth of Mistral's work and how it throws us to varied meditations on virginity, pain, nostalgia, and transformation. Close readings of Mistral's poetry and prose in their original Spanish facilitate the ripple or mapping effect of the project. The essay attends to etymologies and layered translations. They are the locus from which to explore theoretical and literary relationships between binaries and what occurs upon synthesis and transformation of binaries. Boundaries between conceptual dualisms, like light and dark, function as thresholds for creativity and change. Presenting boundaries not as limiting but instead as thresholds and places of origin is the shaping force in this essay. It considers both departures from origins and loyalty to origins while births of words and "lights" flow in and away from each other, and shape the layers of chiaroscuro in Mistral's verse. |
