"Jodorowsky's memoirs of his experiences with Master Takata and the group of wisewomen magiciennes who influenced his spiritual growth"--Provided by publisher.

In this classic memoir that explores the Nazi presence in the south of Chile after the war, Marjorie Agosín writes in the voice of her mother, Frida, who grew up as the daughter of European Jewish immigrants in Chile in the World War II era. Woven into the narrative are the stories of Frida's father, who had to leave Vienna in 1920 because he fell in love with a Christian cabaret dancer; of her paternal grandmother, who arrived in Chile later with a number tattooed on her arm; and of her great-grandmother from Odessa, who loved the Spanish language so much that she repeated its harmonious sounds even in her sleep. Agosín's A Cross and a Star is a moving testament to endurance and to the power of memory and words. This edition includes a collection of important new photographs, a new afterword by the author, and a foreword by Ruth Behar.

In this unique memoir, renowned poet, fiction writer, critic, and activist Marjorie Agosin writes in the voice of her mother, Frida, the daughter of European Jewish immigrants, living in Chile in the years before, during, and after World War II. Frida recounts stories from her family's Jewish/Chilean history: of her father, who had to leave Vienna in 1920 because he fell in love with a Christian cabaret dancer; of her paternal grandmother, who came to Chile later with a number tattooed on her arm; and of her great grandmother, an immigrant from Odessa, who learned to speak Spanish in Chile and loved the language so much that she repeated its harmonious sounds even in her sleep. Frida's stories of the past soften the realities of present times, when some immigrants from Germany still display portraits of Hitler m their homes and Jews still remain, after two generations, strangers in their own land. These stories are permeated with the shadow of faraway war in Europe, which haunts Frida's dreams and is a vivid presence in the everyday life in this Chilean town. For Frida the cross and the star of the title come to define two worlds that are for her distinct, yet inexorably entwined. Agosin's poetic reflections reveal a culture and a landscape little-known outside of her native land, explore the boundaries of "voice", and create a moving testament to endurance and to the power of memory and of words.

El Norte Grande of Chile is the world's driest desert, a vast, barren expanse where a person can live an entire lifetime without ever feeling a single drop of rain, where rivers vanish into the sands and trees are all but unknown. But this forbidding landscape has many stories to tell an observant, inquisitive traveler. Someone like Ariel Dorfman. Renowned as a poet, essayist, novelist, and playwright, he combines eloquence, passion, and personal experience with a sure sense of place and a keen eye for the telling detail that brings history to life -- for this account of his journey through the desert is also a chronicle of modern Chile. Like an archaeologist, he sifts through shards of memory to recreate a world that no longer exists but still casts a long shadow over his native land. Ghosts are at the heart of his tale, from the ruined boomtowns where great nitrate fortunes were built to the seaside prison where Dorfman's old friend Freddy Taberna spent his last night before being executed in 1973 after the overthrow of Salvador Allende's government. In these pages, long-abandoned mining communities are summoned up in their glory days, when the mansions of mineral millionaires were built on the punishing labor of workers forever in hock to the company store. Nor are these the only ghosts. In this sweeping book, Dorfman also examines the oldest mummies in the world, visits an observatory at the top of the world that scans the light from long-dead stars, and sifts through the remains of indigenous villages buried under tons of sand. Skillfully interweaving present and past, memoir and meditation, fascinating history and colorful family lore, Desert Memories gazes across the seeming emptiness of el Norte Grande, finds a complete and compelling world, and conjures it up with the kind of elegant simplicity that only the most sophisticated of travelers can achieve.

In 1825 Captain Francis Bond Head retired from the army to take up a post with a mining company to survey and report on mining opportunities in Chile and Argentina. This mission earned him the nickname "Galloping Head" as a result of his travels back and forth across the continent and gave him the material for this book, which was much admired by Charles Darwin on his own journey from ocean to ocean six years later.