Sister Juana
Hi, StoryMakers! Do you ever feel like things aren’t fair? Our StoryMaker this month, Sister Juana Inés De La Cruz, used her words and creative writing to speak out against things she thought were not right and not fair. God gave her an amazing, smart brain to come up with unique and brave arguments to help people understand that God is for everyone.
Juana was born in San Miguel Nepantla, Mexico (near modern day Tepetlixpa), on November 12, 1648. When Juana was born, girls did not go to school or even learn at home. When she was little, though, she taught herself to read and write, and she spoke three languages: Spanish, Latin, and Nahuatl. She wrote her first poem at age eight, about how the Eucharist is sometimes easier for us to understand than big religious words like “Incarnation.”
She kept writing poems and joined a nunnery in 1667. She became a Hieronymite nun because it allowed her the most chances to keep learning and writing. Juana chose her name to honor Sister Juana de la Cruz Vázquez Gutiérrez, another nun who was one of the first women in Mexico to preach the Gospel of God’s love and grace to us. This was important to Juana as well.
Juana was frustrated that schools and churches only invited men to learn. She fought for the rights of women and indigenous people in Mexico to learn and read like the wealthy men. She knew what Paul wrote in Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Juana wrote an essay pointing out errors in a famous priest’s sermon and wrote Respuesta a Sor Filotea, her most famous work arguing for the rights of women and against the way people were keeping others out of the church and schools. She got in trouble for those works and lived much of her life under threat.
In her lifetime, Juana wrote more than 400 poems, helped survivors of abuse, and was nicknamed “the Tenth Muse” for her many plays, poems, and essays. She is considered the first great Latin American poet and spent her life reminding important people that God is always for everyone, even those who seem small or unimportant.
