Who Is Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648–1695), born Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana in San Miguel Nepantla, New Spain (present-day Mexico), was a self-taught scholar, poet, playwright, and Hieronymite nun who became the most important literary figure of colonial Latin America and one of the most remarkable intellects of the seventeenth century anywhere in the world. A child prodigy who reportedly learned to read at age three and begged to be sent to the university disguised as a boy, she entered the convent of San Jerónimo in Mexico City at age twenty—not primarily out of religious vocation but because the convent was the only institution that would allow a woman the time, resources, and intellectual freedom to pursue a life of study and writing. For over two decades she maintained a private library of some 4,000 volumes (one of the largest in the Americas), conducted scientific experiments, composed poetry and plays, and engaged in theological and philosophical debate with the leading minds of her era.

Sor Juana matters for IMHU’s mission because she embodies the intersection of contemplative life, intellectual courage, and the politics of knowledge in a way that remains strikingly contemporary. Her famous letter Respuesta a Sor Filotea ("Reply to Sister Philothea," 1691)—written in response to a bishop who publicly rebuked her for engaging in secular intellectual pursuits—is one of the earliest and most eloquent defenses of women’s right to education and intellectual life in any language. It’s also a profound meditation on the relationship between knowledge and faith, arguing that all forms of learning ultimately serve the contemplative life because understanding creation deepens understanding of the Creator. Under mounting ecclesiastical pressure, she eventually gave up her library and instruments, signed a confession in her own blood, and devoted herself entirely to caring for her fellow nuns during a plague epidemic—during which she died at age forty-six. Whether her renunciation was genuine conversion or coerced surrender remains one of the great interpretive questions of Latin American literary history.

Core Concepts

1. The right to knowledge as a spiritual imperative
   • Sor Juana’s most enduring argument is that the pursuit of knowledge is not opposed to the life of faith but is itself a form of devotion. In the Respuesta, she traces her own compulsion to learn from earliest childhood and argues that God gave her this inclination—and to suppress it would be to refuse a divine gift. She catalogs the ways in which secular learning (mathematics, music, physics, history, philosophy) illuminates sacred texts and deepens contemplative understanding. This integration of intellectual inquiry and spiritual practice anticipates much of what IMHU advocates about the relationship between rigorous thinking and genuine inner development.
2. The gendered politics of who gets to think
   • Sor Juana lived the consequences of being a brilliant woman in a patriarchal society that distrusted female intellect. Her defense of women’s education wasn’t abstract; it was autobiographical. She documented how she was mocked, envied, silenced, and ultimately forced to choose between her mind and her safety. Her analysis of how institutions use theological or moral language to police who is allowed to know remains painfully relevant—and extends naturally to questions about whose spiritual experiences, whose healing practices, and whose ways of knowing are taken seriously.
3. The convent as a space for intellectual freedom
   • Sor Juana’s choice to enter the convent was strategic: it was the only institution in colonial Mexico that offered a woman privacy, a library, and freedom from marriage. This reframes the contemplative life not as withdrawal from the world but as the creation of conditions under which serious inner work—intellectual, creative, and spiritual—becomes possible. Her example raises questions about what institutional structures are needed to support genuine contemplative and intellectual life, especially for those whom mainstream institutions exclude.
4. Primero Sueño—the soul’s nocturnal flight toward knowledge
   • Sor Juana’s most ambitious poem, Primero Sueño ("First Dream," c. 1685), is a 975-line philosophical poem describing the soul’s attempt to comprehend the totality of creation during sleep. It draws on Neoplatonic, Hermetic, and scholastic sources to map the mind’s ascent toward universal knowledge, its failure to grasp the whole, and its return to waking consciousness chastened but undiscouraged. It’s the most significant philosophical poem in the Spanish language and a remarkable phenomenological account of the mind’s encounter with its own limits—a theme central to both contemplative practice and the philosophy of consciousness.

Essential Writings

• Poems, Protest, and a Dream (trans. Margaret Sayers Peden)
  • An excellent bilingual selection of Sor Juana’s poetry and prose, including the complete Respuesta a Sor Filotea. Peden’s translations are fluid and intelligent, and the introduction provides essential historical context.
  • Best use: the best single-volume introduction to Sor Juana for English-language readers. Start with the Respuesta.
• Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Selected Works (trans. Edith Grossman)
  • A more comprehensive selection of Sor Juana’s literary output, translated by one of the finest Spanish-to-English translators working today. Includes poetry, prose, and excerpts from her dramatic works.
  • Best use: for readers who want a fuller picture of Sor Juana as a literary artist, not just a polemicist.
• Sor Juana, or, The Traps of Faith (Octavio Paz)
  • Nobel laureate Octavio Paz’s magisterial biography and intellectual portrait of Sor Juana, placing her within the philosophical, theological, and political currents of seventeenth-century New Spain. Dense but brilliant—the definitive critical study.
  • Best use: for readers who want to understand Sor Juana in her full historical and intellectual context.