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Sor Juana's Second Dream: A Novel
This bold novel unravels the mystery and complexity of the woman Carlos Fuentes calls "the first great Latin American poet." Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648-1695), poet, playwright, rhetorician, and musician, is often equated with Sappho, the lesbian poet whom Plato baptized the "Tenth Muse."
The Mexican nun has fascinated readers around the world for centuries as scholars have attempted to understand her brilliance, her feminism, the affairs of her heart, her decision to enter a convent at the beginning of her luminous intellectual career.
Juana Ramírez de Asbaje, an illegitimate criolla, is sixteen when word of her self-taught erudition travels to the palace in Mexico City and she becomes an attendant to Doña Leonor Carreto, Marquesa de Mancera. Wanting only to study, confused by her love for la Marquesa, and loathe to marry, in five years Juana becomes Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz in the Convent of Santa Paula of the Order of San Jerónimo. There, her quill becomes her salvation and damnation as her notoriety mounts with each new artistic commission. Popular with court and clergy, she receives a stream of guests at the convent, among them la Condesa de Paredes, who becomes Sor Juana's intimate friend. More than two decades later, after brilliantly defending her right to think, teach, and write, Sor Juana appears before the Inquisition and abruptly withdraws from the spotlight.
Mixing fiction with Sor Juana's own words, and drawing on the most recent Sor Juana scholarship, Alicia Gaspar de Alba creates the most full-bodied portrait of Mexico's Tenth Muse to date. This remarkable novel about a remarkable woman will enlighten a new generation of readers, and stoke the interest of devotees who already are captivated by the inspiring Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.
"An adventuresome exploration into the lyrical and historical vision of an extraordinary woman, written by an extraordinary novelist who has given us a new possibility to dream and invent Sor Juana Inés all over again."--Marjorie Agosín, Wellesley College
"Beautifully written, without doubt the best book I have read this year. A masterpiece."--Greg Sarris, author of "Watermelon Nights"
The Mexican nun has fascinated readers around the world for centuries as scholars have attempted to understand her brilliance, her feminism, the affairs of her heart, her decision to enter a convent at the beginning of her luminous intellectual career.
Juana Ramírez de Asbaje, an illegitimate criolla, is sixteen when word of her self-taught erudition travels to the palace in Mexico City and she becomes an attendant to Doña Leonor Carreto, Marquesa de Mancera. Wanting only to study, confused by her love for la Marquesa, and loathe to marry, in five years Juana becomes Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz in the Convent of Santa Paula of the Order of San Jerónimo. There, her quill becomes her salvation and damnation as her notoriety mounts with each new artistic commission. Popular with court and clergy, she receives a stream of guests at the convent, among them la Condesa de Paredes, who becomes Sor Juana's intimate friend. More than two decades later, after brilliantly defending her right to think, teach, and write, Sor Juana appears before the Inquisition and abruptly withdraws from the spotlight.
Mixing fiction with Sor Juana's own words, and drawing on the most recent Sor Juana scholarship, Alicia Gaspar de Alba creates the most full-bodied portrait of Mexico's Tenth Muse to date. This remarkable novel about a remarkable woman will enlighten a new generation of readers, and stoke the interest of devotees who already are captivated by the inspiring Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.
"An adventuresome exploration into the lyrical and historical vision of an extraordinary woman, written by an extraordinary novelist who has given us a new possibility to dream and invent Sor Juana Inés all over again."--Marjorie Agosín, Wellesley College
"Beautifully written, without doubt the best book I have read this year. A masterpiece."--Greg Sarris, author of "Watermelon Nights"
474 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1999
About the author
Alicia Gaspar De Alba
20 books42 followersAlicia Gaspar de Alba is a scholar, cultural critic, novelist, and poet whose works include historical novels and scholarly studies on Chicana/o art, culture and sexuality.
She is from the border between El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, where she lived until age 27. She has a B.A. (1980) and a M.A. (1983) in English from the University of Texas at El Paso, and a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of New Mexico (1994). She started her doctoral work at the University of Iowa in 1985 but left after a year, then lived in Boston, Massachusetts for four years. In 1994, she was hired as one of six founding faculty members of the then César Chávez Center for Interdisciplinary Instruction in Chicana and Chicano Studies at University of California, Los Angeles. She has published and organized a conference on the Juarez murders. Alicia Gaspar de alba also keeps a regular blog called "Cooking With Sor Juana".
(from Wikipedia)
She is from the border between El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, where she lived until age 27. She has a B.A. (1980) and a M.A. (1983) in English from the University of Texas at El Paso, and a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of New Mexico (1994). She started her doctoral work at the University of Iowa in 1985 but left after a year, then lived in Boston, Massachusetts for four years. In 1994, she was hired as one of six founding faculty members of the then César Chávez Center for Interdisciplinary Instruction in Chicana and Chicano Studies at University of California, Los Angeles. She has published and organized a conference on the Juarez murders. Alicia Gaspar de alba also keeps a regular blog called "Cooking With Sor Juana".
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
October 23, 2015
Virginia Woolf in "A Room of Her Own" famously invented a sister named Judith Shakespeare with an appetite for learning but no opportunity to obtain it. The story does not end well. Not long after Shakespeare's death, there was a sort of real world experiment along those lines, involving a woman who had almost certainly the greatest mind in Latin America, and probably the best one in the whole of the hemisphere. Sor Juana was born in what was then a Spanish colony to an unmarried woman, but it was a family of means and the grandfather had books. She was precocious, adept at languages and writing, and shocked the admittedly small world of the 17th century Mexican intelligentsia by outdebating them in public as a teenager. Unlike Judith Shakespeare, Sor Juana found patrons, principally two Viceroys and their wives. But even in that milieu, a young woman was expected to be either wife or nun, and she chose the latter. No doubt because of the viceregal patronage, she was able to indulge her passion for both literature and science, not always successfully managing to contain them within the strictures of orthodox theology. Her poetry is much loved, although very ornate in the Baroque style, and some of it has clear erotic undertones. Once the sympathetic viceroys returned to Spain and an even more dour Catholicism became the rage of the colony, Sor Juana's story did not end well either. Unable to restrain her mind or pen, she was forced to confess and accept the penance of forgoing her writing, and she died tending to the sick in the convent infirmary. It is a powerful story and the subject of at least one film and several novels. Alicia Gaspar de Alba does will with the milieu in which Sor Juana lived, not just the politics of convent life but the atmosphere of the viceregal court and the countryside in which she grew up. Research frequently blunts the historical novel, but this one largely escapes that with convincing detail. Even the discussions of theology and orthodoxy are tolerable--the final one, her defeat at the hands of the Archbishop and the Inquisition, has a suitably tragic majesty. Where it fails is where one would least expect it from a novelist, especially one who disagrees with Octavio Paz' theory that Sor Juana was not an active lesbian. One would expect a modern interpretation to handle eroticism well but lose its way in the thickets of long-gone Church doctrine. There is a particularly unconvincing scene with Sor Juana and the wife of one of the Viceroys (complete with complicit Viceroy). A seventeenth century convent--even one that has now been converted into a cultural center that bears Sor Juana's name--seems like one of the most unlikeliest setting for a compelling novel, but it turns out not to be impossible.
January 21, 2026
She says I have the best fingers for washing hair, that she likes the way my nails scrub her scalp and make it tingle. I scrub harder and swallow the words that want to fly out of my mouth: your head is the sun and I a meager planet held in its orbit.
I beseech the most pure, the most benevolent, our Lady of Guadalupe, to save me from this ugliness. Hide me under your robe, dear Lady, crush me under your feet like a serpent.
She closed her eyes and saw the image of Aristophanes' Woman, two heads on one neck. The face on both of them was her own, one framed by a nun's veil, the other wearing the pointed yellow hat of a penitent.
In other dreams, I see you touching the beads on your rosary, your fingers moving on the dark cedar circles, one by one, and I become the small crucified body on the end of that rosary.
The rain outside sounded like nails against the shutters, nails pounding into her temple, nails in her palms and feet, nailed to the Cross of her gender, that man nailing her to her fate by betraying his promise.
And she would dream images of a sacrifice in which she was the victim lad out on the sacrificial slab, with the Bishop and the Archbishop as High Priests and Andrea and Melchora and Agustina as their minions handing them the instruments of her torture: a rosary noose, a veil of thorns, a bit for her mouth, and a crucifix with sharp points that folded into scissors.
That’s the problem with secrets. They multiply, like sins or fish.
— Alicia Gaspar de Alba
I beseech the most pure, the most benevolent, our Lady of Guadalupe, to save me from this ugliness. Hide me under your robe, dear Lady, crush me under your feet like a serpent.
She closed her eyes and saw the image of Aristophanes' Woman, two heads on one neck. The face on both of them was her own, one framed by a nun's veil, the other wearing the pointed yellow hat of a penitent.
In other dreams, I see you touching the beads on your rosary, your fingers moving on the dark cedar circles, one by one, and I become the small crucified body on the end of that rosary.
The rain outside sounded like nails against the shutters, nails pounding into her temple, nails in her palms and feet, nailed to the Cross of her gender, that man nailing her to her fate by betraying his promise.
And she would dream images of a sacrifice in which she was the victim lad out on the sacrificial slab, with the Bishop and the Archbishop as High Priests and Andrea and Melchora and Agustina as their minions handing them the instruments of her torture: a rosary noose, a veil of thorns, a bit for her mouth, and a crucifix with sharp points that folded into scissors.
That’s the problem with secrets. They multiply, like sins or fish.
— Alicia Gaspar de Alba
July 23, 2020
I do wish this book was offered for Kindle as it's a sizeable paperback with small print - but it's so good I've carted it around everywhere anyway. It's written by an academic who has researched this to the bone, but it's not stuffy or dry: it's a beautiful and tragic, historically accurate but fictionalized feminist account of the life of Sor Juana, scholar and nun in Mexico City during the time of the Inquisition - and is now one of my favorite books. I'm moving across the country and it's one of the few that I'm bringing with me so I can share it with someone else looking for a deep, engaging and profound thing to read (or maybe I'll read it again someday, something I RARELY do but there's so much in here). Yes, I realized I fit a LOT of adjectives into this review, but I have nothing but good to say about this work.
March 1, 2018
An Intriguing Tale about a 16th Century Mexican Nun
Sor Juana’s Second Dream is a beautiful historical novel about Sor Juana Ines de La Cruz, known in her time as the “Tenth Muse” and widely regarded as Mexico’s first feminist. The book takes important but dry and dense historical primary documents and transforms them beautifully into a fictional autobiography that melds first and third person narration, lyrical prose, a pantheon of well wrought characters: the nuns, priests, and Spanish royalty with whom Sor Juana lived, worked, and came into conflict.
This novel is not recent, written in the late 1990s, but it is as relevant as ever. Sor Juana’s story is an important one, and this novel explores not only the more well known aspects of her intellectual life and accomplishments, but it also explores the lesser known history of her affairs with women. The true story of America’s first lesbian, feminist nun is one for all people who are determined to live their lives true to themselves and to challenge the boundaries and restrictions others would put on the life of the mind and the heart. Thank you, Professor Gaspar de Alba, for this treasure of a novel.
Sor Juana’s Second Dream is a beautiful historical novel about Sor Juana Ines de La Cruz, known in her time as the “Tenth Muse” and widely regarded as Mexico’s first feminist. The book takes important but dry and dense historical primary documents and transforms them beautifully into a fictional autobiography that melds first and third person narration, lyrical prose, a pantheon of well wrought characters: the nuns, priests, and Spanish royalty with whom Sor Juana lived, worked, and came into conflict.
This novel is not recent, written in the late 1990s, but it is as relevant as ever. Sor Juana’s story is an important one, and this novel explores not only the more well known aspects of her intellectual life and accomplishments, but it also explores the lesser known history of her affairs with women. The true story of America’s first lesbian, feminist nun is one for all people who are determined to live their lives true to themselves and to challenge the boundaries and restrictions others would put on the life of the mind and the heart. Thank you, Professor Gaspar de Alba, for this treasure of a novel.
May 24, 2020
It was a tough read. I didn't love the book but it's still a very well done book. The issues for me was the long, winding passages of descriptions and thoughts Juana would have that, rather than feeling necessary, they just felt a but excessive. But it's the story about what her life could have been, so to a point I understand. Even if it is daunting to read it when the last 3rd of the book there's such a constant, f*cking terrible premonition thanks to the backstabbings withing the church to her. And the depiction of the times, how life was inside the convent, the hypocrisy of the Spanish church, and the questioning of who you are and where you come from was amazing. It's worth reading at least once and then leave forever in a corner of your room.
April 20, 2022
Me atrevo a decir que es uno de mis libros favoritos hasta ahora. Tiene de todo: drama, pasión, tristeza, felicidad y muchos momentos y escritos que reflejan la misoginia que después de más de trescientos años seguimos presenciando en México. Gracias Sor Juana por ser la primera feminista de América.
Read
August 13, 2019Umm
I didn't really like this but also I guess it's good I don't live in colonial mexico as a lesbian
I didn't really like this but also I guess it's good I don't live in colonial mexico as a lesbian
December 24, 2019
Ugh I loved it!!! Legit cried at the end. Señora Gaspar de Alba truly did Sor Juana Ines absolutely beautifully.
February 7, 2020
Fascinating character ruined by an extremely dry, meandering treatment and uneven writing style & tone.
November 20, 2012
As someone deeply interested in human sexuality and gender practices, as well as a liberal female undergraduate at Harvard, conceptions of gender have always intrigued me. In particular, I am fascinated by the trends in gender norms and structures. Alicia Gaspar de Alba picks apart these norms using the story of 17th century nun Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. And it is beautiful.
Rarely does one encounter a novel that borders on so many literary genres. Sor Juana's Second Dream is a historicized fiction (making it distinct from historical fiction), but it is also a memoir that was never written, and a collection of letters and poems long since burnt. Gaspar de Alba's language ranges from the soft description of a kiss, to the blunt relation of historical facts, and around again to poetry that aches in content and in form.
The roots of this novel no doubt lie in the real life of Sor Juana, but the directions it takes from that point are truly remarkable. To call this work creative would be inadequate. It is masterfully designed, interwoven, and even choreographed. Sor Juana's invented words dance on the page with furor and passion. They are the music and the movement.
Yet Sor Juana as a character is frustrating. Her sharpened mind and passions subvert gender norms of her era, and this subversion is enhanced by many moments invented by Gaspar de Alba. The other characters surrounding Juana are interpreted through her eyes, as well. Although this has a fantastic effect of showing us the scratches on the lens of Juana's world-view, it often leaves me wondering how someone so fantastically intelligent can behave so stupidly toward others. Prudence is not a word in Juana's vocabulary. This obstinance makes her difficult to like. Reading from my historical perspective, her often uncontrolled anger and tongue seems overdone and even historically inaccurate.
No matter how wild Juana may be, I highly recommend this book. It raises important questions about sexuality, faith, and even about historical writings. I would not find it hard to imagine Sor Juana reading this herself, nodding approvingly, and then setting it aside to write a review. If only I could hear her voice recite the final poem...
Rarely does one encounter a novel that borders on so many literary genres. Sor Juana's Second Dream is a historicized fiction (making it distinct from historical fiction), but it is also a memoir that was never written, and a collection of letters and poems long since burnt. Gaspar de Alba's language ranges from the soft description of a kiss, to the blunt relation of historical facts, and around again to poetry that aches in content and in form.
The roots of this novel no doubt lie in the real life of Sor Juana, but the directions it takes from that point are truly remarkable. To call this work creative would be inadequate. It is masterfully designed, interwoven, and even choreographed. Sor Juana's invented words dance on the page with furor and passion. They are the music and the movement.
Yet Sor Juana as a character is frustrating. Her sharpened mind and passions subvert gender norms of her era, and this subversion is enhanced by many moments invented by Gaspar de Alba. The other characters surrounding Juana are interpreted through her eyes, as well. Although this has a fantastic effect of showing us the scratches on the lens of Juana's world-view, it often leaves me wondering how someone so fantastically intelligent can behave so stupidly toward others. Prudence is not a word in Juana's vocabulary. This obstinance makes her difficult to like. Reading from my historical perspective, her often uncontrolled anger and tongue seems overdone and even historically inaccurate.
No matter how wild Juana may be, I highly recommend this book. It raises important questions about sexuality, faith, and even about historical writings. I would not find it hard to imagine Sor Juana reading this herself, nodding approvingly, and then setting it aside to write a review. If only I could hear her voice recite the final poem...
April 18, 2012
During the 17th-century in Mexico, women were either married or forced into the convent, but they were not educated, nor were they thought to have souls. Sor Juana, an erudite prodigy, chose to become a nun, not because she felt a calling, but because to her, marriage was simply unimaginable. Sor Juana rebelled against the Inquisition and the overwhelmingly patriarchal world she lived in. She wrote and read about the wonders of the world, and when this became public, she was threatened into silence by the Catholic hierarchy. Sor Juana then surrendered her worldly ways and became completely devoted to her religious duties. Through Gaspar de Alba’s historical fiction novel, readers are exposed to Sor Juana, not only a controversial woman who questioned her patriarchal and superstitious society but a woman who was also a lesbian.
This book also reveals Sor Juana’s struggle with identity. Sor Juana's experiences remind us about the binary opposition between man and woman and how it continues to exist as a feminist issue. This book does well to highlight this ongoing battle through the eyes of a revered but controversial Saint.
I am glad this book was required reading in college. It definitely leaves a lasting impression, and it continues to be a book I recommend!
This book also reveals Sor Juana’s struggle with identity. Sor Juana's experiences remind us about the binary opposition between man and woman and how it continues to exist as a feminist issue. This book does well to highlight this ongoing battle through the eyes of a revered but controversial Saint.
I am glad this book was required reading in college. It definitely leaves a lasting impression, and it continues to be a book I recommend!
February 20, 2012
This is a fantastic book. I feel bereft now that I've finished reading the book. Partly because she creates an extraordinary world and she uncovers a hidden history, a denied history. Definitely worth reading but not that easy to get a hold of.
It is set in the late 17th century Mexico. So Juana begins as a poor girl who is a prodigy at a time when it is very hard to be both these things. She is taken up by the palace but the male powers are not keen on her because she's smarter than all of them put together. She outwits forty professors and she's never been to school!
Her only option is to become a nun. But nunneries with the wrong leaders can become places of intrigue when some of the people there see an opportunity. And when the Inquisition is heating up, a nun who has been published and refutes so much ... well she is in trouble.
It is set in the late 17th century Mexico. So Juana begins as a poor girl who is a prodigy at a time when it is very hard to be both these things. She is taken up by the palace but the male powers are not keen on her because she's smarter than all of them put together. She outwits forty professors and she's never been to school!
Her only option is to become a nun. But nunneries with the wrong leaders can become places of intrigue when some of the people there see an opportunity. And when the Inquisition is heating up, a nun who has been published and refutes so much ... well she is in trouble.
May 12, 2015
I was not expecting to enjoy this book as much as I did. While the main character endured horrible things in her life simply because she was a woman with ideas, Sor Juana was not without her faults. I really enjoyed this view into life in New Spain (Mexico) in the 1600s. The book was very critical of the treatment of women during this time, especially by the Catholic Church. While I do not see Sor Juana as a symbol of feminism I can appreciate the value of her story to help understand why we need it and why sadly nearly 400 years later, we still have a long way to go.
April 19, 2009
Can I just say I loved this book? What an amazing presentation of an era of which I would never think I'd be interested in reading about. This was an excellently written novel, with original poetry by Sor Juana woven throughout the story. I was so engrossed in the life of this woman, and so saddened by how her life ended. A great feminist read.
June 10, 2014
If anything, I think this book elucidates that the figure of Sor Juana, both historical and fictional, cannot be pigeonholed into one description: poet, lesbian, nun. She is all of those and yet much more. Her intellect and bravey in a sea of persecution is very admirable; some of her actions are human, and therefore not so admirable. Quite fascinating.
August 21, 2009
A beautifully written fictional recreation of an extraordinary woman, Sor Juan Inés de la Cruz, mexican poet, writer and musician of the 17th century.
The author, Alicia Gaspar de Alba, is a true storyteller.
The author, Alicia Gaspar de Alba, is a true storyteller.
February 27, 2007
Brilliant colonial Mexican nun writes controversial theological arguments and beautiful poetry. Falls in love with Spanish nobility. Gets in big trouble.
February 12, 2008
This is a great book. What women will do to come into their own and how men in the past regarded them; not to mention the Catholic religion. We've come a long way Sisters!
November 22, 2008
I am loving this book. It is a historical novel about the life of Sor Juana.
September 7, 2010
Wow. Pretty powerful book. Does not shy away from speculation about Juana's sexuality. Mixes history and fiction to bring this figure to life.
July 6, 2011
Very well written and interesting historical novel. About a Mexican nun in 1600-somthing. However, I could not warm up to any character, much less the star Juana who beat her slaves and students.
February 24, 2012
Love this novel and the writer's reimagining of the life of Sor Juana.
May 6, 2012
I really couldn't stop reading it. Alicia Gaspar de Alba has an exciting style of writing which has been translated successfully.
January 3, 2015
This had some plot but not really enough. I wish the author had included a more comprehensive not about which parts of Sor Juana Inez's story were true and which were fictional.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews