Juana Mauela Gorriti (1818-1892) is one of the outstanding women writers of nineteenth-century Argentina. She wrote in various genres from fiction and travelogues to cookbooks and essays and she edited a number of literary reviews in Lima and Buenos Aires, where she put women's issues before the public.

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La tierra natal is a journey into the past, and also a farewell. Since 1831, when forced to follow her father into exile in Bolivia, Juana Manuela Gorriti had not returned to Salta; though there are some opinions about the stealth trip disguised in man's clothes, depicted in her short story "Gubi Amaya," being somewhat autobiographic. A trip from Buenos Aires up to the country's North in 1878 becomes frustrated at Tucuman. And it is just in 1886, fifty five years after her departure, that she can return to Salta. Just twenty days, to walk her memories, talk with with the descendants of her own people, and be welcomed as a notable personality, a living legend, as she shyly and painfully acknowledges . The book contains a complex travel narrative: a return to the birthplace and also to the past; but above all, to the interior of memories, to the comparison of the real to-day with what the memory, filled with the want of permanence, has treasured. A wanting that shows itself in the superimposing of faces and characters; a grandfather in the poise of his grandson, a historic reference in a house faade, or a ghost from the past that returns as someone innominated passing by the street. The wandering is not motivated by nostalgia of what cannot be brought back, but the search of understanding what exists now, where what was then is no longer there. The structure is that of the best travel books: the trip becomes the thread, but the interpolation of remembrances is responsible for the weave. A useful background fact is that, according to the 1895 census, the province of Salta had 118.015 inhabitants, and the capital city that awaited Juana Manuela Gorriti only 20.361; thus it was small, deeply religious and the rural aspects still permeated the everyday life.

In 1875, Juana Manuela Gorriti hurried to finish her new novel, Peregrinaciones de una alma triste, in order to include it in the two-volume collection, Panoramas de la vida, published in 1876, dedicated to the women of Buenos Aires. Peregrinaciones is both the story of a young woman's dramatic liberation and self-discovery, and a critical travelogue of conditions in southern South America. The narrator, Laura, tells a close woman friend about her escape from her home in Lima, where she was dying of tuberculosis, and the series of adventures that stimulated her into health, independence and energetic engagement with the welfare of others. As she travels, she witnesses the horrors and glories of 19th century society, from bandit attacks, civil wars, and indigeneous rebellions to the cruelties of slavery. She journeys through varied terrain, from mountain peaks to the jungle, where she dresses in male clothing for self-protection. At this time when national identity was being defined, Laura assesses the populations and problems of the Southern Cone nations, with the help of the friends she makes during the course of her travels. Juana Manuela Gorriti (1818-1892) is one of the best known and most eloquent 19th century writers of fiction. Born in Argentina, she went to Bolivia with her family after her Unitarian father was defeated by Juan Facundo Quiroga in 1831. She settled in Peru, began to publish stories and novels, and established a literary salon attended by Lima's leading intellectuals. Ever restless, like the protagonist of Peregrinaciones, she traveled frequently and wrote about it, very aware of changing conditions as Peru, Chile and Argentina modernized. She died in Buenos Aires, where many of her books were first published, including Sueos y realidades, Panoramas de la vida, El mundo de los recuerdos, and many others. This edition of Peregrinaciones has been updated with plentiful footnotes and a critical introduction by Mary G. Berg, author of many studies of Latin American women writers and their times. This novel would fit well into courses on Latin American narrative, women writers, Southern Cone history, gender and cultural studies, and nation-building in the nineteenth century.