When author and poet Marjorie Agosin read a collection of her poems in the Handwerker Gallery yesterday, she said she hoped to educate students about the Jewish community in Latin America.  

She was born to Jewish parents in the United States but spent much of her childhood and adolescence in Chile.  Her family fled the country when the military overthrew the government.

Yesterday, Agosin read from her book, “A Cross and A Star.” The book contains memoirs of her mother and father as they grew up in a Jewish community during World War II.  She said she wrote a memoir of her mother’s childhood as a Jewish immigrant in a German community in Chile before, during and after World War II.

“I came to the United States to be a Jewish writer interested in Jewish life,” Agosin said.  “I wanted to understand the life of my parents and recreate their lives.”

Agosin is a professor of Spanish at Wellesley College and a spokeswoman for the plight of women in Third World countries.  

Displacement is a common theme in her poetry, as she focuses on her family’s experiences during the Holocaust.  She said those experiences have given her a heart for human rights, particularly for Chilean women who have lost their husbands.

 Her human rights initiatives are currently displayed through “Threads of Hope: The Chilean Arpillera Movement” at the Handwerker Gallery. The collection includes arpilleras, which are hand-sewn tapestries created by women whose relatives were among those listed as detained or disappeared during the military dictatorship in Chile.

Annette Levine, assistant professor of Latin American and cultural studies, was inspired by Agosin’s poetry, first as an undergraduate Spanish major, and still today.

“As a graduate student, I had an opportunity to hear her read in Milwaukee, and she just left this amazing impression on me, and so I read her work more broadly,” Levine said.  “She inspired me to pursue my doctorate degree in literature and dictatorship.”  

Levine said she wanted to bring Agosin to Ithaca College because it would be a new and interesting experience for students.

“Very few students and very few young people in the United States know much about Jewish communities in Latin America, and I think it’s really eye-opening for them to hear about Jewish life outside of the United States,” Levine said.

Levine publicized the event with posters and advertisements. She also advertised the talk to her students, such as sophomore Laura Kerrigan, a Spanish education major.

“Annette Levine is in my professor for Spanish 202, and she’s just really involved in human rights, and I am as well,” Kerrigan said.  “I knew that if she was hosting something like this that it would be really important and really moving, so I wanted to come and hear this woman speak.”

Junior Jessica Askew, a drama and Spanish major, said she attended the event because she was interested in hearing Agosin speak and attendance was required for her Conversational Spanish class.  She also said she’s read a couple of Agosin’s poems about Anne Frank, Argentina and Chile in class.

“I’ve gone to a couple of other poetry readings, and I like hearing the differences [between] how poets read their work as opposed to every so often we’ll read them in class and listen,” Askew said.  “It’s just nice to hear coming from her.”

Agosin has won several awards for her human rights work, including the Good Neighbor Award in 1988 given by The National Conference of Christians and Jews.  She has published several books of poetry but says her greatest accomplishment has been having and raising her children.

Agosin said she was happy to share her work with students at the college today.  She said she hopes students will learn from her poetry that one can have a life of struggle but also a life of meaning and a life of beauty.

“I like to be in Ithaca, be with the students to share this world [of Jewish culture] that I think is very important,” Agosin said.