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Chilean-American writer Marjorie Agosín to inaugurate Latino Heritage Month at EMU

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EMU logo - newEastern Mennonite University will host the Sept. 17-18 visit of Chilean-American writer Marjorie Agosín.

A professor of Latin American studies and Spanish language at Wellesley College, Agosín will share poetry, art, conversation and personal history with the campus community and with select groups of faculty and students, including graduate students from Eastern Mennonite Seminary and the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding.

On Friday, Sept. 18, she will help to inaugurate Latino Heritage Month with the Latino Students Association at a 10 a.m.chapel in Lehman Auditorium.

She will also attend a 4-5 p.m. public reception, at Common Grounds Coffeehouse on the EMU campus. Additionally, a collection of of arpilleras will be displayed at the Margaret Gehman Gallery. The small quilted squares were created by groups of women, called arpilleristas, who were protesting the horrific brutality of General Augosto Pinochet’s regime during the 1970s and 1980s.

While on campus, Agosín will also visit a Hispanic Civilization class and host a Spanish-language luncheon with Tertulia, the conversation club. She’ll also speak about transgenerational trauma in an hour-long event for seminary and CJP graduate students that is also open to the campus community and sponsored by both the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding and the Center for Interfaith Engagement.

Agosín has published more than 80 books, including two recent books of poetry: The Light of Desire / La Luz del Deseoand Secrets in the Sand: The Young Women of Juárez. Born in Maryland, she moved with her Jewish parents in 1955 back to their Chilean homeland at the age of three months. She was raised in a German community until her family fled to the United States during the overthrow of Salvadore Allende’s government by the U.S.-backed military forces of General Augusto Pinochet.

She is the recipient of many awards, including the Dr. Fritz Redlich Global Mental Health and Human Rights Award (2013); the Good Neighbor Award (1988); the National Mujer Award (2004); the Letras de Oro Prize (1995); and the Latino Literature Prize (1995).

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