The Answer/la Repuesta

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648/51-1695), a Mexican nun, was a brilliant poet, playwright, and essayist whose persistent defense of the intellectual rights of women brought her increasingly into conflict with church officials, who repeated tried to silence her. Sor Juana died by taking care her sister nuns during a plague in April 1695.

Electa Arenal, professor emerita of Hispanic and Women's Studies (City University of New York), is a translator and specialist in Hispanic monastic women's culture. Listed in Feminists Who Changed America, Arenal's fourth co-authored book, an illustrated, critical edition of Sor Juana's Neptuno alegórico, was published by Editorial Cátedra, in Spain.

Amanda Powell, award-winning poet and translator, teaches Latin American and Spanish literature and literary translation at the University of Oregon. Powell has published essays on: 16th- and 17th-century Spanish and Colonial Latin American women writers; convent writings; Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz; the "boom" in women's love poetry across 17th century Europe; and literary translation.