The Glass of Milk

Manuel Rojas was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on January 8, 1896. His youth was spent between Argentina and Chile, influencing the settings of his stories like “The Glass of Milk.” He also traveled while working as an unskilled laborer. These experiences gave Rojas unique insight into the plights of the working or lower classes, which is reflected in his work.

As a young man, he became involved with various anarchist groups and contributed to anarchist journals. As in many parts of the world, the early 20th century saw a growing labor movement in Chile with workers forming unions and striking for better working conditions. Rojas wrote articles for anarchist newspapers based in Chile and Buenos Aires. La Batalla, the one in Buenos Aires, was one of the longer-running anarchist newspapers, publishing between 1912 and 1926. In 1933, the Socialist Party of Chile was founded, with the Popular Front Party taking control of the government in 1936. The Socialist Party helped ensure the survival of the left-wing coalition in Chile. In 1938, Rojas published a collection of essays titled De la Poesía a la Revolución. Anarchist ideas can be seen in “The Glass of Milk” in observations like calling the city “a place of slavery [where] people lived and died dazed by an anguished toil” (Paragraph 21). Anarchist thinkers like Emma Goldman wrote extensively about “wage slavery,” the idea that capitalists keep workers impoverished by paying insufficient wages. This promotes a cycle in which workers must constantly work to stay afloat, though they don’t materially improve their circumstances.

Aside from political texts, Rojas began to publish widely in the 1920s. In 1921, he returned to Argentina and published his first works of poetry, including a volume entitled Poetic. He received his first award in 1922 for his story “The Lake,” and he published his first book of short stories, Men of the South, in 1926. After his mother died in 1928, Rojas was hired as a librarian at The National Library of Chile. He also worked at the University of Chile Press. During this time, he married his first wife, María Baeza, whose death inspired his poem, “Lost Rose.” He released one of his most famous works, “The Glass of Milk,” in 1927; it was featured in his second short story collection, The Offender. In the 1930s, he published two novels: Boats in the Bay (1932) and The City of the Caesars (1936). In 1957, he received the Chilean National Prize for Literature and went on to become a professor of Chilean and American Literature, both in the United States and at the University of Chile. Rojas died on March 11, 1973, in Santiago, Chile, shortly before the military coup.