His parents were emigrants from Bessarabia and Odessa (Ukraine). The United Nations hashonored her for her work on human rights. The Chilean govern- ment awarded her with the Gabriela Mistral Medal of Honor for Life Achievement in 2000. She is a recipient of the Belpré Medal. In the United States, she has received the Letras de Oro, the Latino Literary Prize, and the Peabody Award, together with the United Nations Leadership Award in Human Rights. She edited the anthology These Are Not Sweet Girls: Poetry by Latin American Women (White Pine Press, 1991), featuring newly translated poems by Gabriela Mistral, Rosario Castellanos, Giannina Braschi, Olga Nolla, Julia de Burgos, Violeta Parra, Cristina Peri Rossi, and other Latina poets. Agosín si aprolific author: her published books, including those she has written as well as those she has edited, number over eighty. She has published several books of fiction, among them two col- lections of short stories: LaFelicidad (1991) and Las Alfarenas (1994). Agosin's series of memoirs began with a book about her mother's life in the south of Chile, A Cross and a Star: Memoirs of a Jewish Girl in Chile (1995). The later twovolumes related the story of her father's life, Always from Somewhere Else (1998), and Agosin's own story, The Alphabet in My Hands (2000). In each of these books, the prevailing theme is that of the Jewish immigrant who is trying to find a place in Latin American society.