The Sor Juana Festival serves to honor Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz--one of Mexico’s greatest writers--and to celebrate and showcase the rich artistic accomplishments of Mexican women from Mexico and the United States.  The Festival also recognizes Mexican women leaders with the Sor Juana Lifetime Achievement Awards. As a testimony to the enduring spirit of women worldwide, the Festival honors a woman whose life reflects the spirit of Sor Juana.

Known as La Décima Musa (the Tenth Muse) and often referred to as The First Feminist of the Americas, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1651-1695) was a playwright, philosopher, mathematician, and poet. During Mexico¹s colonial period, women¹s roles in society were restrictive, and most educational opportunities, except through the church, were inaccessible to women.  Sor Juana entered a convent and became a nun, which enabled her to pursue her passions for scholarship and writing. Sor Juana¹s brilliance and intellect may have led to her own demise when she entered a religious debate in the male dominated society of her time. Forced to recant her ideas and relinquish her massive library, she purposely went to care for fellow nuns during an epidemic, fell ill, and died.

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