Yugar, Theresa A., and Rosemary Radford Ruether. Sor Juana Inés De La Cruz: Feminist Reconstruction of Biography and Text. Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2014.
- Theresa Ann Yugar been studying the thought and writings of the seventeenth century Mexican writer, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, for more than twenty years. She wrote a Master’s thesis on Sor Juana’s thought in 1997 at Harvard University and a doctoral thesis at the Claremont Graduate University in 2013. (authors credibility)
- Book is about Sor Juana’s life and culmination of her research
- Latina feminism and it’s effect on ecofeminism in the Americas in the sense of what it means to be fully human as a woman in the context of patriarchal society.
- Founding mother in the latin feminism community that led a tragic martyr in the struggle for authentic life.
- Mesoamerican worldview that was crushed by the Spanish conquerors but was still very much present in the family and local population in which she grew up, the haciendas of Nepantla and Panoayán outside Mexico City.
- The world brought to Mexico by the Spaniards that represented their colonial expansion, their championing of the Counter Reformation of the Catholic Church against the Protestant Reformation and their gender ideology and practices which they developed in Spain and brought to their colonies in the Americas.
- Sor Juana struggled with being stuck between two cultures and as well as with her own vision of redemption as the reconciliation of these world views through the lenses of both cultures.
- She grew up with her mother during her childhood days. Her mother was extremely strong because she was an unmarried women so her mother was already fighting the gender based stereotypes of society.
- Sor Juana’s father was an absent father.
- At the age of sixteen, Sor Juana became a lady-in-waiting at the vice regal court and was influenced particularly by the Vireina Doña Leonor Carreto. This influential woman was drawn to Juana’s intelligence and creativity and nurtured her development as a scholar and writer.
- Sor Juana wrote poems that were read by the elite, sometimes critical of the inequalities she saw around her and the assumptions of women’s inferiority.
- As she reached adulthood, she had to pick between getting married and taking her place in a male dominated society or enter the religious life of becoming a nun. She chose to become a nun because it places her in a community of women who are in charge of their own lives, resources and intuitions. And this fact was very appealing to sor juana.
- From here own, she began to get the education she always carved and wrote her own books and did research. She also spread her Knowledge.
- When the church found out of her doings, she got into conflict with powerful and egotistical men in the church community. They were scandalized by her independent voice.