Alicia Partnoy

Professor Emeritus of Modern Languages and Literatures - Spanish

  • Los Angeles CA UNITED STATES

Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts

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Biography

Alicia Partnoy is an author, human rights activist, and a survivor. Her book The Little School. Tales of Disappearance and Survival, was used as evidence in the trials against the genocide perpetrators in Argentina.She is the author of the poetry collections Flowering Fires/Fuegos florales (recipient of the First Settlement House American Poetry Prize) and Little Low Flying/Volando bajito, translated by Gail Wronsky. Partnoy edited You Can't Drown the Fire: Latin American Women Writing in Exile, and co-edited Chicana/Latina Studies: the journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social. Poems from her Revenge of the Apple/Venganza de la manzana were posted on the metro in New York, Dallas, and Washington D.C., and sung by Sweet Honey in the Rock. She translated Gail Wronsky’s poetry collection So Quick Bright Things/Tan pronto las cosas, and Kate Gale’s opera libretto Río de Sangre. Partnoy’s work has been twice a Pushcart Foundation Writer's Choice Selection (Tobias Wolff and Bobbie Ann Mason), and a London Times best-seller.

A former Vice-Chair of Amnesty International, and member of the Board of Directors of PEN-West, Alicia Partnoy is a founding member of Proyecto VOS-Voices of Survivors, an organization that brings survivors of state sponsored violence to lecture at U.S. universities.

Education

The Catholic University of America

Ph.D.

Postgraduate Studies

1997

With Distinction

The Catholic University of America

M.A.

Spanish Language Literature

1991

The American University

Certificate in Translation

Spanish-English

1987

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Areas of Expertise

Writing and Political Repression
Testimonio
Women Writers
Social Semiotics
Contemporary Latin American Literature

Languages

  • Spanish
  • English

Media Appearances

Interview for Poetry LA

Poetry.LA  

Alicia Partnoy, a poet who survived Argentina's "dirty war" of the 1970s, was one of thousands of "disappeared" sent to detention camps by the military dictatorship. During three years of imprisonment, she was tortured and many of her friends were killed. Expelled from Argentina in 1979, she came to the U.S. as a political refugee. Her first book, The Little School: Tales of Disappearance and Survival (Cleis Press, 1986) is her "tribute to a generation of Argentines lost in an attempt to bring social change and justice." Her poetry collections include "Flowering Fires" (2015), "Little Low Flying" (2005) and Revenge of the Apple" (1992). She edited the anthology "You Can't Drown the Fire: Latin American Women Writing in Exile" (1988). She currently teaches at Loyola Marymount Univ. in Los Angeles. - Video by www.Poetry.LA

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Workshop Attendees Speak Out to End Isolation

Poets & Writers  online

amie Asaye FitzGerald, director of Poets & Writers' California Office and Readings & Workshops (West) program, describes her visit to a writing workshop led by P&W-supported writer Alicia Partnoy for the organization Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement (CIVIC).

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Telling The Untellable

The Story  

Alicia Partnoy speaks to guest host Sean Cole about the Little School, the secret prison in Argentina where she was held in 1977.

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Articles

A Collective Testimony by Argentine Genocide Survivors: The Prison Walls Cry and We Laugh

Bloomsbury Publishing

“A Collective Testimony by Argentine Genocide Survivors: The Prison Walls Cry and We Laugh.” Loss and Hope: Global, Interreligious and Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Peter Admirand ed. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014, pp. 9-17.

Concealing God: How Argentine Women Political Prisoners Constructed a Collective Identity

Biography

“Concealing God: How Argentine Women Political Prisoners Constructed a Collective Identity.” Biography. 36:1.Winter 2013, pp. 211-41.

Cuando Vienen Matando: On Prepositional Shifts and the Struggle of Testimonial Subjects for Agency

Publications of the Modern Language Association of America

"Cuando Vienen Matando: On Prepositional Shifts and the Struggle of Testimonial Subjects for Agency." PMLA. Publications of the Modern Language Association of America. Vol. 121:5. October 2006, pp 1665-1669.

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