River of Sorrows
AUTHORS
Libertad Demitropulos and Mary G. Berg
Set during the 16th century tumult of exploration and first settlements along the Paraná River in Argentina, River of Sorrows, based on actual events, is told by people marginalized and usually invisible in history. Mestizo soldier Blas de Acuña’s great unrequited love for the firey María Muratore prompts him to tell the story of María’s amazing exploits, but it’s not Blas but his second wife who insures that María is not forgotten by history. By constantly retelling the story, she creates a larger-than-life image that embraces all the women who kept the settlements alive, propped up the men and put loaded guns in their hands, and became the collective memory of a nation that, 450 years later, would be home to the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo.
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Mary G. Berg's recent translations from Spanish include the edited volume Open Your Eyes and Soar: Cuban Women Writing Now (2003) and the novels I've Forgotten Your Name (2004) by the Dominican Martha Rivera; River of Sorrows (2000) by the Argentinean Libertad Demitrópulos; and Ximena at the Crossroads (1998) by the Peruvian Laura Riesco, as well as stories, women's travel accounts, literary criticism, and collections of poetry, most recently Quincunx and The Book of Giulio Camillo by the Cuban Carlota Caulfield (Cuba). She and Dennis Maloney have translated twentieth-century Spanish poetry, including Antonio Machado's There Is No Road (2003), and The Landscape of Castile (bilingual, 2005). She teaches at Harvard Extension and is a Resident Scholar at the Women's Studies Research Center at Brandeis University, where she writes about Latin American writers, including Clorinda Matto de Turner, Juana Manuela Gorriti, Soledad Acosta de Samper, and contemporary Cubans.
Demitropulos Libertad, who died in July of 1998, is widely recognized as one of the finest Argentine writers of the twentieth century. Of her seven novels, River of Sorrows is the most acclaimed.