Mexican · 1648–1695
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was a Mexican nun, poet, playwright and scholar of the Spanish Golden Age. Born Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana near Mexico City, she learned to read as a small child and taught herself widely from her grandfather's library. She served at the viceregal court before entering the convent of San Jerónimo in 1669, where she kept a large library and wrote for the rest of her life. Her work includes love sonnets, religious verse, villancicos, the philosophical poem Primero Sueño, and plays such as Los empeños de una casa. In 1691 she wrote the Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz, a defense of women's right to education, after the bishop of Puebla criticized her secular studies. Under church pressure she gave up her books and writing in 1693. She died in 1695 while nursing sisters during an epidemic. She is regarded as the leading poet of colonial Latin America and an early voice for women's learning.