Wild Country Out in the Garden

Kathleen A. Myers is a professor of Spanish and adjunct professor of History at Indiana University. Her publications include Word from New Spain: The Spiritual Autobiography of Madre Maria de San Jose (Liverpool University Press, 1993) and numerous articles on a variety of religious women and writers in colonial Spanish America. She has received a grant from the Spanish Ministry for Education and Culture for her work on autobiography and sixteenth-century chronicles of America.Amanda Powell, poet and translator, teaches Spanish/Latin American literature and literary translation at the University of Oregon. Her translations of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century poetry and prose appear in Untold Sisters: Hispanic Nuns in Their Own Works (University of New Mexico Press, 1989). With Electa Arenal, she edited and translated The Answer/La Respuesta by colonial Mexican poet Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (The Feminist Press, 1994). Her scholarly essays, translations, and poems appear in a variety of anthologies and journals.Myers and Powell were awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support research and translation for A Wild Country Out in the Garden.

• PrefaceIntroductionTranslator's NoteTranslated SelectionsStudyChapter One: Maria de San Jose's WorldI. The Palacio-Berruecos Family and the Hacienda Santa CruzFamily PortraitsReligious Vocation and Family RelationshipsII. Convent LifeDaily LifeThe Spiritual JourneyChapter Two: Gender, Tradition, and Autobiographical Spiritual WritingsThe Tradition of Women's Visionary WritingsImitation, Models, and TrainingMaria de San Jose and Her ConfessorsNarrative and Rhetorical StrategiesMen's and Women's "Vidas"Appendix A: The History of Maria de San Jose's Writing CareerAppendix B: Outline of Volumes I-XII and a ChronologyAppendix C: Short Facsimile Selections of Maria de San Jose's ManuscriptsBibliographyGlossary