By Skyler Gomez | On June 25, 2019 | Updated March 25, 2024 | Comments (0)
Mary Hunter Austin (September 9, 1868 – August 13, 1934) was an American novelist and essayist who focused her writing on cultural and social problems within the Native American community.
In addition to spending seventeen years making a special study of Indian life in the Mojave Desert, Austin was also an early feminist and defended the rights of Native Americans and Spanish Americans.
Mary Hunter was born in Carlinville, Illinois and was the fourth of six siblings whose parents were Savannah and George Hunter. In 1888, her family moved to Bakersfield, California, where they established a homestead in the San Joaquin Valley. That same year, she also graduated from Blackburn College.
Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On June 5, 2019 | Updated August 24, 2022 | Comments (0)
Adrienne Rich (May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012) was an American poet and essayist known for her radical feminism and activism.
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, she was raised in a family that included a younger sister. Her father who worked as a pathologist at John Hopkins, and her mother was a classical concert pianist. It was her father who first encouraged her literary leanings.
After graduating from Roland Park Country School, Rich attended Radcliffe College (the former women’s college of Harvard University), from which she graduated in 1951. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On May 27, 2019 | Updated August 25, 2022 | Comments (0)
Sara Teasdale (August 8, 1884 – January 29, 1933) was an American poet known for her deceptively simple lyric poetry that emphasized life’s beauty.
Born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, she was the youngest of four children of wealthy parents. In delicate health throughout her childhood, she was tutored at home until the age of ten.
Despite her privileged background, and being spoiled and petted, Sara’s childhood was often lonely. She lived in a separate suite in her family’s grand homes, often left alone. The ill health of her childhood followed her throughout much of her adult life, and she often had to have a nurse-companion. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On May 22, 2019 | Updated November 16, 2024 | Comments (0)
Emma Lazarus (July 22, 1849 – November 17, 1887), American poet, translator, and immigrant advocate. She’s best known for the poem “The New Colossus” (1883), whose lines beginning with “Give me your tired, your poor …” are inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty.
As touching and world-famous as this poem has remained, it’s but a tiny portion of her body of work. The life of Emma Lazarus, brief as it would be, was filled with accomplishment, not only as a writer, but as an advocate for immigrants (especially Jewish immigrants) and refugees.
Read More→
By Skyler Gomez | On May 3, 2019 | Updated March 25, 2024 | Comments (0)
Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa (September 26, 1942 – May 15, 2004) was a queer Chicana poet, feminist theorist, and writer. Going by the name Gloria E. Anzaldúa as an author, her writing and poetry discuss the anger that stems from social and cultural marginalization.
She herself experienced this kind of marginalization growing up in the Mexican-Texas border as the daughter of a Spanish American and Native American. (Photo above right courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.)
Anzaldúa was born in Jesús María Ranch in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas as the oldest of four siblings. Throughout her childhood, her parents, Urbano Anzaldúa and Amalia Anzaldúa García, moved their family to various ranches working as migrant farmers.
Read More→
Categories: 
Comments: