Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
1648-1695 17th century
Intelligence held as a gift of God, and an imposed silence inhabited without pretence.
Who was Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz?
A child prodigy of New Spain and self-taught, she entered a convent in Mexico City so that she could study. Her library and scientific instruments drew admiration and then suspicion; ordered to be silent, she eventually sold everything and gave herself to the sick, catching the epidemic that killed her. She is the greatest poet of colonial America.
In their own words
I do not study in order to write, still less to teach, but only to see whether by studying I may be less ignorant.
To be silent is not to have nothing to say: it is that words cannot hold all there would be to say.
I, the worst of all.