Marjorie Agosín

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Marjorie Agosín (1955–2025) was a Chilean-American writer known for poetry, essays, and memoirs. She spoke and wrote about women’s rights and human rights, and her work has been honored around the world.

Early life and background
She was born on June 15, 1955, in Bethesda, Maryland, to Jewish Chilean parents, Moisés and Frida Agosín. When she was three months old, her family moved back to Chile. She grew up in Santiago and at a summer home in El Quisco, where the poet Pablo Neruda sometimes visited. She was raised with a mix of Jewish heritage and Chile’s Catholic culture and even attended a Hebrew School in Santiago.

Move to the United States and education
In 1970, the family moved to the United States, and after the Chilean coup in 1973 the move became permanent. She studied in Georgia and earned a PhD in Latin American Literature from Indiana University Bloomington.

Academic career
Agosín began as an assistant professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. At age 37, she became a full professor, one of the youngest in the college’s history, and she taught there for more than twenty years. She edited the poetry anthology These Are Not Sweet Girls: Poetry by Latin American Women (1991).

Writing and themes
She began writing poetry in Spanish when she was ten years old and chose to write most of her work in Spanish. She was a prolific author, with more than eighty published books, including poetry, fiction, and memoirs.

Selected works
Her two short-story collections are La Felicidad (1991) and Las Alfarenas (1994). Her memoirs include A Cross and a Star: Memoirs of a Jewish Girl in Chile (1995), Always from Somewhere Else (1998), and The Alphabet in My Hands (2000). Her poetry collections include The Light of Desire / La Luz del Deseo (2009) and Secrets in the Sand: The Young Women of Juárez (2006). She also contributed the piece "Women of Smoke" to Sisterhood Is Global (1984).

Awards and recognition
Agosín received many honors, including the Gabriela Mistral Medal of Honor for Life Achievement from the Chilean government in 2000, the Belpré Medal, the Peabody Award, and the United Nations Leadership Award in Human Rights. In the United States, she won Letras de Oro and the Latino Literary Prize.

Death
Marjorie Agosín died on March 10, 2025, at her home in Wellesley, Massachusetts.