A Queer Mother for the Nation : The State and Gabriela Mistral

Chilean writer Gabriela Mistral (1889-1957), the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, was a poetic idol for generations of Latin Americans who viewed her as Womanhood incarnate, the national schoolteacher-mother. How this distinctly masculine woman who never gave birth came to occupy this role, and what Mistral's image, poetry, and life have to say about the relations-and realities-of race, gender, and sexual politics in her time, are the questions Licia Fiol-Matta pursues in this book, recreating the story of a woman whose misrepresentation is at least as intriguing, and as instructive, as her fame. A Queer Mother for the Nation weaves a nuanced understanding of how Mistral cooperated with authority and fashioned herself as the figure of Motherhood in collaboration with the state. Drawing on Mistral's little-known political and social essays, her correspondence and photographs, Fiol-Matta reconstructs Mistral's relationship to state politics. Her work questions the notion of queer bodies as outlaws, and insists on the many ways in which queer subjects have participated in and sustained the normative discourses they seem to rebel against. Licia Fiol-Matta is assistant professor in the Department of Spanish and Latin American Cultures at Barnard College. Chilean writer Gabriela Mistral (1889-1957), the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, was a poetic idol for generations of Latin Americans who viewed her as Womanhood incarnate, the national schoolteacher-mother. How this distinctly masculine woman who never gave birth came to occupy this role, and what Mistral's image, poetry, and life have to say about the relations-and realities-of race, gender, and sexual politics in her time, are the questions Licia Fiol-Matta pursues in this book, recreating the story of a woman whose misrepresentation is at least as intriguing, and as instructive, as her fame.

A Queer Mother for the Nation weaves a nuanced understanding of how Mistral cooperated with authority and fashioned herself as the figure of Motherhood in collaboration with the state. Drawing on Mistral's little-known political and social essays, her correspondence and photographs, Fiol-Matta reconstructs Mistral's relationship to state politics. Her work questions the notion of queer bodies as outlaws, and insists on the many ways in which queer subjects have participated in and sustained the normative discourses they seem to rebel against.

Contents......Page 8 Acknowledgments......Page 10 Introduction: The Schoolteacher of America......Page 14 PART I: A Gay Hagiography?......Page 32 ONE: Race Woman......Page 34 TWO: Schooling and Sexuality......Page 68 THREE: Citizen Mother......Page 96 FOUR: Intimate Nationalism......Page 125 PART II: Queering the State......Page 154 FIVE: Image Is Everything......Page 156 SIX: Pedagogy, Humanities, Social Unrest......Page 189 SEVEN: Education and Loss......Page 217 Epilogue: The “National Minority Stereotype”......Page 244 Notes......Page 252 B......Page 288 C......Page 289 F......Page 290 G......Page 291 L......Page 292 M......Page 293 N......Page 295 P......Page 296 R......Page 297 S......Page 298 U......Page 299 Z......Page 300 Gabriela Mistral, private and public. There's been much debate about the subject but Fiol-Matta takes it further and amplifies it. In the book, she touches on Mistral's possible Lesbianism or in a White-Race supremacy belief before turning into the defender of Native Americans and Mestizos. She also talks about the use of pictures and other visual elements to create Mistral's image. The book is not easy to read, but brings new aspects on Mistral's life to counterback her "Mythical" and "Sanctified" Image. And as the author says, it is an opportunity to re-read the author's work, one of Latin America's Finest. A Queer Mother for the Nation weaves a nuanced understanding of how Gabriela Mistral (1889-1957), the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, cooperated with authority and fashioned herself as the figure of Motherhood in collaboration with the state