Scraps of life marjorie agosin biography

The first book I ever read by Chilean poet Marjorie Agosín was Circles of Madness: Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. The power of its images left me numb.

Scraps of life marjorie agosin biography

The title refers to the mothers of “disappeared” sons and daughters during the “dirty war” carried out by the military dictatorship in Argentina between and Thousands of young people vanished, victims of the government’s campaign against dissenters.

Their mothers marched in the Plaza de Mayo, in front of the presidential palace in Buenos Aires, wearing white kerchiefs and demanding to know the whereabouts of their children.

Published in a bilingual edition in by White Pine Press, Circles of Madness captures magnificently the anguish of mothers who fear the worst, yet refuse to give up hope.

They go about their daily chores in empty houses that were once filled with chatter and mirth: “She goes to the closets, / to the beds, / she cleans / a house that