SOURCE: “The Creation of Alfonsina Storni,” in A Dream of Light and Shadow: Portraits of Latin American Women Writers, Marjorie Agosén, editor, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995, pp. 95–117.

In the following essay, Kirkpatrick discusses Storni's essays in the context of her literary career and the status of women in Argentina during the early twentieth century.

The Argentine poet Alfonsina Storni (1892–1938) has become a legend in Latin American literary history.¹ Socially defiant, professionally ambitious, gifted with talent and early fame, she was nonetheless limited by her social origins, her training, and restrictions for women in the public realm. As an unwed mother, she encountered legal and social barriers in her struggle against these obstacles. Her bittersweet triumphs have created a dramatic aura around her poetry and her biography.

Generations have read her poetry and identified with it, and her story has served as the inspiration for movies...