Gabriela Mistral

Gabriela Mistral enjoyed a varied career as a poet, educator, diplomat, and feminist, and was the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1945. She taught primary and secondary school in her native Chile, worked for the League of Nations, and taught at Barnard College, Vassar, and the University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras. From 1932 until her death, she served as a Chilean consul and worked in numerous locations across Europe, the United States, and Mexico. A 1951 recipient of Chile’s National Literature Prize, she also received an honorary doctorate from Mills College in Oakland, California, in 1947. Her collections of poems, such as Sonetos de la muerte (Sonnets of Death, 1914) and Desolación (Desolation, 1922), explore themes of the love of children, sorrow and recovery, travel, and Latin American identity