Alicia Yáñez Cossío (born December 10, 1928, in
Quito
Quito (; qu, Kitu), formally San Francisco de Quito, is the capital and largest city of Ecuador, with an estimated population of 2.8 million in its urban area. It is also the capital of the province of Pichincha. Quito is located in a valley o ...
) is a prominent
Ecuadorian poet, novelist and journalist.
Yáñez Cossio is one of the leading figures in
Ecuadorian literature
The majority of Ecuador's population is descended from a mixture of both European and Amerindian ancestry. The other 10% of Ecuador's population originate east of the Atlantic Ocean, predominantly from Spain, Italy, Lebanon, France and Germany. A ...
and in Latin America, and she is the first Ecuadorian to win the
Premio Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, which she received in 1996.
In 2008 she received Ecuador's highest literary prize, the "
Premio Eugenio Espejo The ''Premio Nacional Eugenio Espejo'' ("Eugenio Espejo National Award") is the national prize of the nation of Ecuador. Decrees 677 and 699 (of August 1975 and September 1997, respectively) established the prize, which is conferred by the President ...
" for her lifetime of work.
Biography
Daughter of Ing.el Alfonso Yánez Proaño and Clemencia Cossío Larrea. When she was six years old she entered the Sagrados Corazones School of
Quito
Quito (; qu, Kitu), formally San Francisco de Quito, is the capital and largest city of Ecuador, with an estimated population of 2.8 million in its urban area. It is also the capital of the province of Pichincha. Quito is located in a valley o ...
, where she stayed for a while due to academic failings stemming from a dislike of arithmetic. However, since she was young, Cossío she always desired to be a writer because of her great talent with words.
3
Yáñez Cossío would later say: “I had an extremely happy childhood, maybe a bit boyish, influenced by the first books I read: the works of Julio Verne and Tarzan’s feats. I never liked dolls.”
4
Her characters frequently represent the community that fights to rescue woman's elementary rights. Male chauvinism is a recurring theme in her writing. Irony, sarcasm and hyperbole make evident twisted masculine superiority, where she critiques social concepts, such as virginity, homosexuality, etc.
She has other unprecedented novels with similar characteristics. One of them is "El Cristo Feo" ("The Ugly Christ").
In 1993, she became a widow. She is a woman whose fame has expanded beyond the borders of her homeland.
In 1996, she received the Premio Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz for the best Latin American novel written by a woman.
5
In 1998, she edited "Retratos cubanos" ("Cuban Portraits") with 18 stories written between 1957 and 1961 from
Cuba. They mainly discussed man's battle to attain freedom. When the original authors left the island, the stories were confiscated, later to be re-written in 1996, mixing history with crude realism.
She is the mother of writer Luis Miguel Campos Yáñez.
Works
Novels
* ''Bruna, soroche y los tíos'' (1973) (English trans. "Bruna and Her Sisters in the Sleeping City" by Kenneth J. A. Wishina, 1999)
* ''Yo vendo unos ojos negros'' (1979)
* ''
Más allá de las islas'' (1980) (English trans. "Beyond the Islands" by Amalia Gladhart, 2011)
* ''La Cofradía del Mullo de la virgen Pipona'' (1985) (English trans. "The Potbellied Virgin" by Amalia Gladhart, 2006)
* ''La casa del sano placer'' (1989)
* ''
El cristo feo'' (1995)
* ''Aprendiendo a morir'' (1997)
* ''Y amarle pude...'' (2000)
* ''Sé que vienen a matarme'' (2001)
* ''Concierto de sombras'' (2004)
* ''Esclavos de Chatham'' (2006)
* ''Memorias de la Pivihuarmi Cuxirimay Ocllo'' (2008)
Poetry
* ''Luciolas'' (1949)
* ''De la sangre y el tiempo'' (1964)
* ''Plebeya mínima'' (1974)
Short stories
* ''El beso y otras fricciones'' (1975)
* ''Relatos cubanos'' (1998)
Theater
* ''Hacia el Quito de ayer'' (1951)
Children's literature
* ''El viaje de la abuela'' (1997)
* ''Pocapena'' (1997)
* ''Los triquitraques'' (2002)
* ''¡No más!'' (2004)
* ''La canoa de la abuela'' (2006)
Awards
* National Novel Contest – Fiftieth Anniversary of the journal "
El Universo" of
Guayaquil (1971)
*
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize
The Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize (''Premio Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz'') is a literary prize awarded to a book written in Spanish by a female author. It is organized by the Guadalajara International Book Fair, based in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Me ...
(1996)
*
Eugenio Espejo Prize in Literature (2008)
The Alicia Yáñez Cossío Children's Literature Competition
In 2002, she was honored by the Government of the Province of Pichincha and its Provincial Patronage by the institution of a children's literature contest that bears her name. This contest aims to stimulate all the districts of
Pichincha's provinces to contribute to the creation of spaces for expression, research and strengthening of cultural identity.
References
# Cossío, Alicia Yánez; C, Sara Beatriz Vanégas Cobeña Vanégas (1 de enero de 1991). ''Bruna, soroche y los tíos''. Libresa.
. Consultado el 12 de octubre de 2016.
# Cossío, Alicia Yánez (1 de enero de 1996). ''El viaje de la abuela''. Libresa.
. Consultado el 12 de octubre de 2016.
#
Volver arriba↑ Rodolfo Pérez Pimentel
«Alicia Yánez Cossío (sic): "Alicia Yánez Cossío"». Consultado el 2010.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Yanez Cossio, Alicia
1928 births
20th-century Ecuadorian poets
Ecuadorian novelists
Ecuadorian journalists
Writers from Quito
Living people
Ecuadorian women novelists
Ecuadorian women short story writers
Ecuadorian short story writers
20th-century novelists
20th-century Ecuadorian women writers
Ecuadorian women poets
Ecuadorian women journalists
20th-century short story writers
21st-century Ecuadorian women