Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was a 17th-century Mexican Baroque author. She was an avid reader as a child and developed great intellect. Despite her fleeting desire to attend university in Mexico City, which was dismissed by her grandfather, Sor Juana studied privately and became a polyglot, catching the attention of Viceroy Marquis de Mancera due to the profound base of knowledge she had constructed for herself.

Word of her intelligence, as well as her physical attractiveness, spread across the land, and though she was pursued by many suitors, she decided to join a convent where she could lead a life of celibacy and continue her studies undisturbed. She enjoyed many liberties in her early years of authorship but gradually lost those protections as fervent allies of hers left her life and came to be the subject of many criticisms. Many argued her works lacked sufficient religious content, most notably Sor Filotea de la Cruz, which she responded to with Respuesta a Sor Filotea, somewhat of a feminist manifesto. This document was way ahead of its time, and amid the controversy that it sparked, Sor Juana was stripped of all her study materials.

Defeated, Sor Juana eventually died in the very convent she had joined 20 years earlier from a plague that swept through town.