On this page
Our own library page contains the usual bookish things -- a rough bibliography of sources for Hunger's Brides, links to other online resources, etc.
But the main thing you will find here are excerpts from the novel, beginning with a couple of passages concerning libraries in Hunger's Brides.
Links
to online resources.
An
unfinished list of books and
other textual sources ransacked for the author's crude purposes.
Excerpts
from Hunger's Brides...
Prologue -- written by the story's self-appointed editor, Dr. Donald Gregory.
Rose of San Jerónimo -- in the voice of Sor Juana's secretary during an outbreak of plague in 1695.
The library - denied access for years, Juana, aged eleven, finally gains entry to her grandfather's library.
The study - during Sor Juana's final years, the Archbishop's men come to the convent without warning to conduct an inventory of the contents of her library and of her studio, which houses an extensive collection of musical and scientific instruments, and curios.
Cassandra - Sor Juana writes to her intimate, the Countess of Paredes, who has returned home to Spain from Mexico City.
On Saint Catherine - learning that the carols she had written on Saint Catherine of Alexandria would never be sung in the cathedral, Sor Juana looks back on the feast of Saint Catherine during her own girlhood in the mountains of Mexico.
Science Queen - The Sor Juana of Hunger's Brides imagines a theology that does not pit reason against faith, the mind against the senses.
Gran patio - Sor Juana looks out over the gran patio of her convent, observing fragments of the lives of the two-hundred women who share the patio with her.
The blond earth - Donald Gregory, the story's self-appointed editor, flies into Calgary from Mexico; he writes from a cabin in the foothills of the Rockies high above Cochrane.
Underworld - the journal entry of a young Canadian woman (Beulah Limosneros) on her first day in Mexico City.
Collections
of excerpts on special topics
- The Spanish Conquest: The exploration and Spanish conquest of the New World are threads running through the novel. A small sampling of these texts is collected here.
- The Inquisition: A few of the texts and scenes from Hunger's Brides that pertain to the Inquisition have been collected here.
