Mowery has a Ph.D. in literature and composition from Southern Illinois University. In the following essay he examines the themes of loss and separation and the bond between a mother and her daughter. In her Lecturas para mujeres (Readings for Women) (1923), Gabriela Mistral reflects on the role of women and mothers in society. She believes that mothers and motherhood represent the means to national formation in both the physical sense and the figurative sense. But she is in constant fear that mothers and women will be victimized and abandoned by the nation and their men. The conflicts between the expectations, creating life and then being abandoned by their offspring, are at the root of much of her writing, including her poetry. In the poem "Fear," she examines the conflict between traditional family values and family structures and the loss of those traditions.

Mistral has illuminated her...