Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (1648-1695)

Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz was born in Mexico and grew up on her maternal grandfather’s hacienda. There, she taught herself logic, literature, and several languages, including Latin and Nahuatl. She briefly served as a lady-in-waiting before entering a convent at 19, where she spent most of her life.

Sor Juana was a prolific writer, best known for her poems and the Response of the Poet to the Very Eminent Sor Filotea de la Cruz (written 1691, published 1700). The Response defends Sor Juana’s study of secular subjects and offers arguments for women’s education. Thus, she is considered one of the first Latin American feminists. She offers various arguments for women’s education in the Response, such as that it would improve their understanding of sermons and that it would allow women to teach women, and thus avoid the potential harms of male teachers.

Some of her most powerful arguments are rejoinders to those who would suggest a woman’s place in the home does not require education. Perhaps all women can have are kitchen philosophies, but there are many secrets about the world to be discovered through cooking: why do eggs fry in butter but dissolve in syrup?. Sor Juana writes, “One can philosophize very well and prepare supper… I say that if Aristotle had cooked, he would have written a great deal more.”

Further Reading: “You Foolish Men,” a poem by Sor Juana 
A Google Doodle in honour of Sor Juana’s 366^th birthday

Image Credit: Public Domain By Juan de Miranda Link

Anna Julia Cooper (1859-1964) 

Anna Julia Cooper was born into slavery in the American South, but ultimately received a classical liberal arts education. She earned a BA and MA from Oberlin College, worked as a college professor and school principal, and in 1925 earned her PhD from the Sorbonne. Beyond this, she published numerous poems and essays, and was part of the women’s and Black liberation movements.

Her best known work, A Voice From the South by a Black Women From the South (1892), examines ethics, politics, and gender and racial injustice. Kathryn Sophia Belle (writing as Kathryn T. Gines) argues that Cooper takes what we would now call an intersectional perspective, examining how racial and gender oppressions interact.

This is especially apparent in her essay “Women Versus the Indian.” Criticizing white women’s tendency to pit the injustices done to women against the injustices done to Black and Indigenous people, Cooper argues that these oppressions are actually linked.

She writes, “woman’s cause is the cause of the weak; and when all the weak shall have received their due consideration, then woman will have her “rights,” and the Indian will have his rights, and the Negro will have his rights.”

This is because for Cooper, freedom is the “birthright of humanity” or human nature. If some people are subjugated, how can anyone truly be free?

Further reading: The philosopher Thomas Meagher explains Cooper’s ethical views, as discussed in her essay “What are we worth?”, and why he includes it in intro-level philosophy classes.

The philosopher Sandrine Bergès on Anna Julia Cooper’s vision of domestic life. 

Image Credit: By Anonymous photographer / engraver - This came from the Archive.org scan of the 1892 book A Voice from the South by Cooper: https://archive.org/details/voicefromsouth00coop/page/n7, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=76506523