Fernando Alegría was a Chile

Chile

Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...

an poet, writer, literary critic and scholar.

Biography

Alegría was born in Santiago, Chile

Santiago, Chile

Santiago , also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile, and the center of its largest conurbation . It is located in the country's central valley, at an elevation of above mean sea level...

 and grew up in the Independencia barrio

Barrio

Barrio is a Spanish word meaning district or neighborhood.-Usage:In its formal usage in English, barrios are generally considered cohesive places, sharing, for example, a church and traditions such as feast days...

of the city. Poets from this barrio include Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet, diplomat and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda....

, Violeta Parra

Violeta Parra

Violeta del Carmen Parra Sandoval was a notable Chilean composer, songwriter, folklorist, ethnomusicologist and visual artist...

 and Volodia Teitelboim

Volodia Teitelboim

Volodia Valentín Teitelboim Volosky was a Chilean lawyer, politician and author.Born in Chillán to Jewish immigrants , Teitelboim was interested in literature from an early age...

.

He received an M.A. from Bowling Green State University

Bowling Green State University

Bowling Green State University, often referred to as Bowling Green or BGSU, is a public, coeducational research university located in Bowling Green, Ohio, United States. The institution was granted a charter in 1910 by the State of Ohio as part of the Lowry Bill, which also established Kent State...

 in 1941 and a Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley

University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

 in 1947.

From 1964-1967, Alegría was a professor at the University of California in Berkeley. From 1967 to 1998 he was a professor at Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

 and for many years he was Chair of the Spanish and Portuguese Language Departments there. He sat on the Board of Trustees at the Western Institute for Social Research (WISR) for about twenty years beginning with its inception in 1975.

Alegría served as cultural attaché from the government of Salvador Allende

Salvador Allende

Salvador Allende Gossens was a Chilean physician and politician who is generally considered the first democratically elected Marxist to become president of a country in Latin America....

 to the United States from 1970 to 1973. He has been the representative of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language in the United States for many years. Among the many awards he has received is the Latin American Prize of Literature.

As an academic and visionary writer and revolutionary, Alegría brought prestige and legitimacy to the Spanish language in the United States of America at a time when children were punished in schools for speaking their native tongues.

A documentary film about the life of Chile’s revolutionary poet Alegría, ¡Viva Chile Mierda!, was produced in 2004. The documentary is a humanistic portrayal of one of the most influential figures from Chile and a key figure in the advancement of Latino culture in the United States of America.

Alegría’s "Viva Chile Mierda", the most recited poem of the Allende era, was written in the 1960s.

Sources

• Epple, Juan Armando. Actas de Palo Alto. La obra literaria de Fernando Alegría. Santiago de Chile: Editorial Mosquito, 2000.
• Epple, Juan Armando, ed. Para una fundación imaginaria de Chile. La literatura de Fernando Alegría. Lima: Latinoamericana Editores-Stanford University, 1987.
• Giacoman, Helmy F. ed. Homenaje a Fernando Alegría. Variaciones interpretativas en torno a su obra. New York: Las Americas Publishing Co., 1972.*
• Ruiz, Rene, Fernando Alegría: vida y obra (Madrid: Playor, 1979).

External links

• Kelly Vance. "Chile Warmth: New documentary celebrates dissenting poet-activist Fernando Alegría." Eastbay Express http://www.eastbayexpress.com/artsculture/chile_warmth/Content?oid=286472
• Literature and Revolution translation

Research resources

• Fernando Alegria Papers, 1924-2000 (59 linear ft.) are housed in the Department of Special Collections and University Archives at Stanford University Libraries