This article examines Gabriela Mistral’s heterodox religiosity as a site of tension between institutional spiritual paradigms and situated life experiences. From her childhood in the Elqui Valley, marked by popular oral traditions and an early encounter with the Bible, to her engagement with Theosophy and the prayers she wrote after the death of Yin Yin, Mistral developed a web of beliefs that exceeds the boundaries of orthodox Catholicism. Drawing on Edward Said’s concept of “worldliness” and Raymond Williams’s “structures of feeling,” the analysis argues that Mistral constructed a spiritual universe that was dynamic, flexible, and in constant dialogue with the historical and cultural processes of her time. Furthermore, the hybridity of her religiosity is understood as an act of resistance against ecclesiastical and political authority, opening a space of female subjectivity in which pain, faith, and writing converge. In this way, Mistral emerges not as a “convert” to a fixed creed, but as a wandering figure who subverts the limits of religious and literary paradigms, offering critical keys to reread her work at the intersection of gender, spirituality, and literature.
Lira Olivares, C. (2025). Yo no soy una conversa: Gabriela Mistral y su tensión a los paradigmas espirituales. Nomadías, (34), 223–236. Retrieved from https://nomadias.uchile.cl/index.php/NO/article/view/80481
