Legends of Love: Exploring Feminine Archetypes in Chicano/Latino History – Florence

A mother’s love, her search for her children, and her desire to serve her family through trials, persecution and death, permeate Chicano/Latino history and culture. Malinalli Tenepal, (Creeping Vine) or Malinche, became the mistress of Hernán Cortés, and later served to remind us that when crushed through oppression, the spirit will rise. Shunned as the infamous “bogey woman” of the Latino world, and known to fly as a ghost at night searching for the children she drowned, La Llorona has a difficult lesson to teach us: the search for wholeness is our birthright. Finally, the Virgen de Guadalupe, has no equal in beauty, and grace, and her miraculous story is over 500 years old!

Stella Pope Duarte is described by Jacquelyn Mitchard as a “magical weaver with a sure hand and a pure heart,” and praised by Ursula K. Leguin as an author who “will enlarge humanity.” Writing Through Revelations, Visions and Dreams: The memoir of a writer’s soul, is her most current work. Duarte has won honors and awards nationwide, including a 2009 American Book Award, a Pulitzer Prize nomination, the Southwest Book of the Year Award, and a nomination to Oprah’s Book Sense list. Inspired to write by a prophetic dream of her father, she believes that writing, like love, begins within, or it doesn’t start at all.