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Woman Without Background Music: Selected Poems of Delia Dominguez

AUTHORS

Delia Dominguez and Isabel Allende


TRANSLATOR

Roberta Gordenstein


INTRODUCTION BY

Marjorie Agosín

Woman Without Background Music: Selected Poems of Delia Dominguez

Born in 1931, Delia Dominguez is one of the most important poets of Chile. Woman Without Background Music is the first volume of her poems to be published in English and collects poems from all phases of her work in a bilingual edition. She lives in Orsono in the south of Chile.

Reviews

“Her poetry is terrestrial with roots, aerial with the wings of birds, translucent like our waters.”


—Isabel Allende


“I love Delia Dominguez dearly, and I want you to love her, and desire her, and nourish yourselves with her infinitely fragrant substances she brings us from afar.”


—Pablo Neruda

Roberta Gordenstein is an associate professor of Spanish at Elms College in Chicopee, Massachusetts.

Marjorie Agosín is a Chilean-American poet and scholar whose work focuses on social justice, feminism, and memory. Her publications include At the Threshold of Memory: New & Selected Poems (2003), The Light of Desire (2010), and I Lived on Butterfly Hill (2014), a young adult novel which won the Pura Belpre medal given by the American Library Association. She has received numerous honors and awards including a Jeanette Rankin Award in Human Rights, a United Nations Leadership Award for Human Rights, the Gabriela Mistral Medal of Honor from the Chilean government, and the Dr. Fritz Redlich Global Mental Health and Human Rights Award. She is the Luella LaMer Slaner Professor in Latin American studies and a professor of Spanish at Wellesley College.

Isabel Allende is one of the most widely read authors in the world, having sold more than seventy-seven million books. Born in Peru and raised in Chile, Isabel won worldwide acclaim in 1982 with the publication of her first novel, The House of the Spirits. Since then, she has authored more than twenty-six bestselling and critically acclaimed books, including Daughter of Fortune, Island Beneath the Sea, Paula, and The Wind Knows My Name.


In 1996, following the death of her daughter, Paula, Allende established a charitable foundation in her honor. The foundation has awarded grants to more than one hundred nonprofits worldwide, delivering life-changing care to hundreds of thousands of women and girls.


In 2014, President Barack Obama awarded Allende the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, and in 2018 she received the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation. Allende lives in California.

Isabel Allende is one of the most widely read authors in the world, having sold more than seventy-seven million books. Born in Peru and raised in Chile, Isabel won worldwide acclaim in 1982 with the publication of her first novel, The House of the Spirits. Since then, she has authored more than twenty-six bestselling and critically acclaimed books, including Daughter of Fortune, Island Beneath the Sea, Paula, and The Wind Knows My Name.

In 1996, following the death of her daughter, Paula, Allende established a charitable foundation in her honor. The foundation has awarded grants to more than one hundred nonprofits worldwide, delivering life-changing care to hundreds of thousands of women and girls.

In 2014, President Barack Obama awarded Allende the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, and in 2018 she received the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation. Allende lives in California.

Delia Domínguez was a Chilean poet, a member of her country's literary Generation of '50.

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