When a Flower Is Reborn

The Life and Times of a Mapuche Feminist

Bibliographic Data

ID5772350
AuthorsRosa Isolde Reuque Paillalef (corresponding author)
EditorsFlorencia E Mallon
Year2002
Pages391
Publication date2002-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueWhen a Flower Is Reborn (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/9780822384212
OpenAlexW4253140273
Open LibraryOL29605532M
ISBN9780822384212
LanguageEN
Citations received18

y editor's introduction ''I'm going to tell you a little about my life, you see, so that we can get to know each other better,'' Isolde Reuque Paillalef says at the beginning of her testimony.These were the first words she spoke to me during our first formal interview on November 29, 1996.We had talked on the phone a couple of times, setting up our meeting, and I had earlier heard from my Santiago colleague María Elena Valenzuela a summary of the role Isolde had played as a Mapuche feminist leader, including a description of how María Elena had gotten to know Isolde on the Chilean delegation to the International Women's Conference in Beijing earlier that year.I met Isolde at the Café Raíces, an experiment in the blending of indigenous cultures, musics, jewelry, and cuisine from all over Latin America that had existed in downtown Temuco for about eight months.Though we were not aware of it at the time, the Café Raíces was already on its last legs when the two of us began to get to know each other across one of its tables.What was perfectly clear to me at that moment were my reasons for wanting to get to know Isolde.Less than a year before I had taught a course on oral history and testimonial literature at the University of Wisconsin in which we had read the most recent experiments in the genre as well as reviewing some of the classics.We had also discussed recent critiques by feminist and postmodern literary critics.In such a context, one of my goals was to explore the possibility of collaborating with a Mapuche woman in the production of a feminist testimonial.I was searching for a horizontal or egalitarian relationship, inasmuch as this was possible.I was not interested in a story that could be ''typical'' or ''representative'' of any group, and in any case I doubted that such typicality could be claimed by any one person.I wanted to collaborate on a testimonio whose author/subject could dialogue and reflect with me about the political and cultural complexities of her people and her culture

Art · Cultural and Social Studies in Latin America · Migration, Education, Indigenous Social Dynamics · Political and Social Dynamics in Chile and Latin America · Chile · Feminists · History · Women social reformers

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