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Claribel Alegría (b. 1924) | |
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Salvadoran-Nicaraguan poet, novelist, essayist, and human-rights activist, noted for her testimonio, accounts of the Sandinista movement and the experience of Salvadoran revolutionaries. Most of her life, Claribel Alegría has spent outside El Salvador in self-imposed exile, in the U.S., Europe, and Mexico and other Latin American countries, but in the 1980s she took up residence in Nicaragua. Alegría's most acclaimed books include Cenizas de Izalco (1966, Ashes of Izalco), Sobrevivo (1978), and Saudade (1999, Sorrow). Come, be my camera. Claribel Alegría was born Clara Isabel Alegría Vides in Estelí, Nicaragua, but she grew up in exile in Santa Ana, El Salvador, where her family had moved when she was still an infant. Daniel Alegría, her father, was a medical doctor and supporter of Augusto César Sandino. After opposing the the U.S. occupation of Nicaragua in 1924 he was forced into exile. Alegría's mother, Ana María Vides, was a Salvadorean, whose family belonged to the coffee planter elite. Later Alegría described her grandparent's house in Santa Ana in Luisa en el país de la realidad (1987, Luisa in Realityland), an experimental novel consisting of short stories, poems and vignettes. Alegría attended José Ingenieros school, founded by her uncle, Ricardo Vides. After winning a scholarship, she spent a summer term at the Loyola University, New Orleans. At the age of 19, she moved to the U.S., where she studied at the George Washington University, Washington DC., receiving in 1948 her B.A. degree in philosophy and letters. In 1947 Alegría married the U.S.-born journalist Darwin J. ("Bud") Flakoll; they had three daughters and one son. Flakoll coauthored some of her novels and translated much of her work into English. He died in 1995. Alegría's Sorrow, a collection of love poems, was written for her deceased husband. Alegría began her literary career under the influence of the Nobel laureate Juan Ramón Jimenez, with whom he studied in Washington, DC. Also Emily Dickinson inspired her work. Alegría's first poetry collection, Anillo de silencio, was came out in 1948. According to some sources, she took the pen name of Claribel Alegría by the suggestion of José Vasconcelos, a Mexican philosopher and writer. In 1951, Alegría moved to Mexico and to Santiago de Chile in 1953, where she and her husband worked on a anthology of Latin American Writers. In 1956 she returned to the United States. A turning point in Alegría's career was the Cuban Revolution of 1959. Her writing, which earlier had been introspective and meditative, took a more politically aware and radical turn. As a figure of resistance, Alegría eventually went into exile from El Salvador. However, later Alegría has said that she never wanted to subordinate her literary work to political activism. For the first forty years of her life, Alegría mostly published poetry. Alegría's style, in blank verse, is urgent and straightforward; female identity, love, death, and suffering are recurring motifs, but her focus is the Central American reality, of which she writes with commitment and passion: "my wounded country, / my child, / my tears, / my obsession" (from 'Documentary'). In the poem 'Eramos tres' (Flores de volcán, 1982) Alegría called herself a "cementerio apátrida" (a cemetary without a country) – in her work, the memories and ideals of the dead live on. While living in Paris, Alegría wrote with Flakoll Cenizas de Izalco, which broke the traditional literary discourse and signaled the end of social realism. The novel was a finalist in the Biblioteca Breve competition sponsored by Saeix Barral. It uses diaries as a narrative vehicle, re-creates the 1932 "Matanza" (massacre) of over 30,000 Salvadoran peasants by government troops. At the time of the event Alegría was eight; she witnessed the aftermath scenes of the uprising, and remained traumatized for many years. Cenizas de Izalco was first condemned in El Salvador by authorities and publicly burned. However, later it was used a secondary school textbook. The subject was suggested by Carlos Fuentes; Alegria first hesitated because until then she had not written prose. Alegría accompanied her husband on diplomatic posting to Argentina and Uruguay. Disillusioned by the U.S.-supported Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba Flakoll eventually resigned from his job and returned to journalism. In the 1960s they lived in Paris and on the island of Mallorca, first in Palma Nova and later in Deiá. The island was a source for Alegría's novella Pueblo de Dios y de Mandinga (1985, Village of God and the Devil). She also met in Mallorca the English writer Robert Graves. Alegría and Flakoll translated Graves's poetry into Spanish. Alegría has also marked the assassination of Archbishop Romero in 1980 as a turning point in her own conscientization. On a trip to El Salvador she saw people put sings in their windows reading, "Haga patria, mate un cura" (be a patriot kill a priest). In her historical/testimonial books Alegría has fused the personal and the political, the collective and the internal. After the fall of Anastasio Somoza and the rise of the Sandinistas to power in 1979, Alegría traveled with Flakoll to Nicaragua, where they moved in 1985. During this period they collected material for Nicaragua: la revolución sandinista: una crónica polítika, 1855-1979 (1982). In 1983 Alegría published with Flakoll No me agarran viva (They Won’t Take Me Alive). The book, based on interviews, tells of the life and death of a young Salvadorian guerrilla and mother, Eugenia, who was a member of the FMLN (Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation). Somoza: expediente cerrado, la historia de un ajusticiamento (1993, Death of Somoza) reveals the story of the assassination of the deposed Nicaraguan President Somoza in Asunción, Paraguay. On the recommendation of the novelist Julio Cortázar, Alegría and Flakoll met a contact person, who helped them to meet and interview the survivors of the commando team, that carried out the "bringing to justice" of Somoza. Alegría is one of Central America's major poetical voices. She has recorded the experience of revolutionaries, the contributions of women involved in the struggle for a new society, and the fate of political prisoners, who have been silenced. In her interest in recovering women's history and bringing women to the foreground, she shares much in common with postcolonial writers from Africa, India, and the Caribbean. Alegría's prizes include the Cuban-sponsored Casa de las Américas Prize in 1978 for Sobrevivo, the 2006 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. The University of Eastern Connecticut awarded her a Doctorate Honoris Causa in 1998. Besides her poetry and prose writings, Alegría has translated works by Robert Graves, Miguel Angel Asturias, and Salman Rushdie. With Flakoll she translated and published On the Front Line (1990), an anthology of Salvadoran guerrilla poetry. Alegría made in 2002 a reading tour with the poet Ernesto Cardenal in the northeastern United States. In the 2006 presidential election she supported the economist Edmundo Jarquin of the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS). For furter reading: 'Some Central American Writers of Liberation', in Culture, Human Rights and Peace in Central America, ed. by George F. McLean (1987); Líneas para un boceto de Claribel Alegría by José Coronel Utrecho (1989); Literature and Politics in the Central American Revolutions by John Beverly and Marc Zimmerman (1990); Spanish American Woman Writers, ed. by Diane E. Marting (1990); Contemporary World Writers, ed. by Tracy Chevalier (1993); Claribel Alegría and Central American Literature: Critical Essays by Sandra M. Boschetto-Sandoval and Marcia Phillips McGowan (1994); Encyclopedia of Latin American Literature, ed. by Verity Smith (1997); Writing Women In Central America: Gender & Fictionalization Of History by Laura Barbas-Rhoden (2003) Selected works:
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