"My main concern, rather than to talk about me, is to talk about my countries," says Claribel Alegría in the Fall 1989 issue of Curbstone Ink. "To talk about what is happening in El Salvador and Nicaragua is important," she continues. "Just to let people know what is happening right there, right then: that's my main concern. Nicaragua and El Salvador. I consider them both my countries."

Alegría, who was born in Nicaragua on 12 May 1924 and grew up in El Salvador, is one of the major contemporary voices in the struggle for liberation in Central America. As a poet, novelist, essayist, storyteller, translator, and indefatigable human-rights activist, she combines both love and revolution, the personal and the political, in her work. It reflects not only a strong commitment to Latin-American social change, but also her concern for the status of Latin-American women. As Nancy Saporta...