Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (1651 - 1695 / San Miguel Nepantla / Mexico)

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Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was an exceptional seventeenth-century nun who set precedents for feminism long before the term or concept existed. Her "Respuesta" is a maverick work outlining the logical sense of women’s education more than 200 years before Woolf’s "A Room of One’s Own." Her poetry, meanwhile, states in bold language the potency of the feminine in both love and religion.

Juana Inés Ramirez was born out of wedlock to Isabel Ramirez and Manuel de Asbaje in a small village in Mexico, New Spain. Manuel soon abandoned the family, so mother and child spent a great deal of time with Juana’s grandfather, Pedro Ramirez. It was in Pedro’s book-filled house that Juana learned to... more »

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