Clara Isabel Alegría Vides is a Nicaraguan poet, essayist, novelist, and journalist who is a major voice in the literature of contemporary Central America.
Background
Alegría was born in Estelí, Nicaragua and grew up in the Santa Ana area in western El Salvador. Although she was too young to read or write, she began composing poetry at the age of six and dictated them to her mother, who would write them down.
Education
George Washington University.
Career
She writes under the pseudonym Claribel Alegría. She was awarded the Alegría consistently cites Rainer Maria Rilke"s "Letters to a Young Poet" as the impetus for becoming a poet. At the age of seventeen, she published her first poems in Repertorio Americano, a Central American cultural supplement.
Soon after, Mexican educator José Vasconcelos arranged for Alegría to attend finishing school in Hammond, Louisiana.
In 1943, she moved to the United States and in 1948 received a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and Letters from George Washington University. Alegría was committed to nonviolent resistance.
Alegría returned to Nicaragua in 1985 to aid in the reconstruction of Nicaragua. Alegría now lives in Managua, Nicaragua.
Alegría"s literary work reflects the style of the popular literary current in Central America during the 1950s and 1960s, "la generacion comprometida" (the committed generation).
Like many other poets of her generation who are critical of their societies, she makes claims for rights using a language which is often counter-literary. Alegría has published many books of poetry: Casting Office (2003), Sorrow (1999), Umbrales (1996), and Louisiana Mujer del Río (1989).
Politics
She had a close association with the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), which overthrew Anastasio Somoza Debayle and took control of the Nicaraguan government in 1979.