Blood Stained Hands ...Sor Juana

Dearest Juana, she reread la Condesa’s letter, you have no idea how I ache to see you, what I would give to be close to you again and touch your ink-stained hands and look into the dark inkwells of your eyes to read the words that you pen no longer writes to me” (Gaspar de Alba, 379).

                                

After checking out the Clothesline Project last week. I saw this shirt and thought about Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz right away. I also thought about the Professor’s book, Sor Juana’s Second Dream. This shirt seems to represent Sor Juana after she was deprived from writing. This shirt made me think about how her uncle molested her and I thought that it represented her well. Some of the phrases on this shirt are words she would have told her uncle. I really wish the shirt was a different color. In the Clothesline Project the shirts colors represent the different categories of survivors and the yellow represents survivors of dating/domestic violence. So I wish it would have been another color. Unfortunately, I didn’t think the Clothesline Project had shirt colors to represent the different types of violence in Sor Juana’s life so the closest shirt color that would fit her from the categories of the Clothesline Project would probably be purple which represents survivors of gender/ sexuality-based sexual violence (keeping the context of Sor Juana’s Second Dream).

            I added the quote to this picture because I think that her “ink stained hands” made me think of her blood stained signature—“Sor Juana: la peor que hubó/la peor de todas.” Also, because I felt the quote represented the picture since I feel that is how Sor Juana felt after she read the Condesa’s words. After having to give up her right to be with the person she loved and then having to give up her love for writing I think that she symbolically felt a knife to her heart. ..This shirt is so powerful!