El doce de mayo/May 12th
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| Image from Nicaragua's El Nuevo Diario, July 2010. Click HERE. |
An internationally recognized poet, essayist, novelist and journalist who was born in Nicaragua, Alegría was raised (from the age of 9 months) in El Salvador after her father, a doctor, went into exile under pressure for protesting human rights violations during the United States' occupation of Nicaragua (1912-1933). Alegría's mother was from a prominent coffee growing family in El Salvador, and the family moved back to her town, Santa Ana. There, Alegría began composing poems at the age of six (dictating them to her mother, as she was too young to read or write). She published her first poems in Repertorio Americano at the age of 17. She attended George Washington University in the United States, graduating in 1948 with a B.A. in Philosophy and Letters. It was there that she met the Spanish poet Juan Ramón Jiménez, who became a mentor (Jiménez would later win the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1956). She also met her future husband, Darwin J. "Bud" Flakoll, an American journalist and diplomat (he was at GW for graduate studies). The two had four children together and remained married until his death in 1995. Her 1999 book of poetry, Saudade (Sorrow), was an exploration of the grief she felt from losing him. Her poem Salí a buscarte (I went out looking for you), included in that anthology, was written after she travelled the world, alone, following the loss (read more (in Spanish) HERE).
SALÍ A BUSCARTE
Salí a buscarte
atravesé valles
y montañas
surqué mares lejanos
le pregunté a las nubes
y al viento
inútil todo
inútil
dentro de mí estabas.
atravesé valles
y montañas
surqué mares lejanos
le pregunté a las nubes
y al viento
inútil todo
inútil
dentro de mí estabas.
Alegría was committed to non-violent resistance. She was in Paris preparing to read at the Sorbonne in 1980 when she heard of the assassination of Salvadoran archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero, a prominent voice against social injustice and government repression. She spent her time at the Sorbonne talking about the murder and the campaign of violence by El Salvador's military government instead of reading her poetry. As such, she was unable to return to the country for her mother's funeral in 1982. She didn't return for 12 years. She and her husband did return to Nicaragua in 1985 to help with the country's reconstruction after years of occupation and civil war (read more in her New York Times obituary, HERE). And through it all, Alegría kept writing. In 2006, she won the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, which is considered one of the more prestigious international literary prizes and often compared to the Nobel Prize in Literature (30 laureates, candidates, or jurors for the prize have gone on to win the Nobel Prize after their involvement with the Neustadt). And in 2017, at the age of 93, she won the prestigious Premio Reina Sofía de Poesía Iberoamericana. See her interview (in Spanish) after she won, HERE. Hear her read her poems HERE.
For resources for teaching Spanish, Level 1 through AP, CLICK HERE.
Other May 12th birthdays of note:
Emilio Estévez (1962- ): Actor, director, and writer who starred in many 80s movies, including The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo's Fire. His father, Martin Sheen (legally Ramón Estévez), is also a well-known actor. Estévez's paternal grandparents (Sheen's parents) are from Galicia, Spain.
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