Among the Angels of Memory: Entre los Ángeles de la Memoria - Agosín, Marjorie. Translated from the Spanish by Laura Rocha Nakazawa. Wings Press, 2006. 195p. $22.95, paperback. ISBN-10: 0-916727-13-0. ISBN-13: 978-0-916727-13-0. 861’.64 Poetry. Holocaust, Jewish (1933-1945).

This outstanding Jewish Chilean-American writer may be unfamiliar to many readers in our congregational libraries. After reading this special book of poetry, I wonder why. Marjorie Agosín has written more than two dozen books; she is a well-known human rights activist and professor of Latin American studies at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. Her poetry in this book is accessible and moving.

In a highly imaginative and yet truthful way, Agosín writes of her grandmother in Vienna and Prague on the cusp of the Holocaust and later, when she settled in Chile. It is a search through fragments, for that is all that is left. Yet Agosín’s imagination takes her back to the time prior to the Holocaust, and a real journey takes her to the places her grandmother lived in a barely recognizable life.

Agosín’s preface in English provides a brief but revealing background for the poetry that follows: “I belong to a lineage of traveling women who were always ready to take flight, women with feet like wings.” In the rest of the book, poems are in Spanish on one page and English on the facing page. This adds immensely to the total experience of reading Agosín, who finds her native Spanish necessary to express what she feels.

Reading the poems aloud enriches the beautiful and evocative lines. This book could be used for discussion, for a meditation, or for a few simple words for worship. Best of all, it is to be read and shared.

Barbara Graham