Nydia Ecury

Nydia Ecury (2 February 19262 March 2012) was an Aruban-Dutch writer, translator and actress. She published five collections of poetry and translated plays of major European and American playwrights into the Papiamentu language, helping to develop the native dialect into a cultural language. The recipient of numerous awards, including the Chapi di Plata literary prize, Ecury was honored as a knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau. Early life Nydia Maria Enrica Ecury was born on 2 February 1926 in Oranjestad, Aruba in a fishing village called Rancho in the west area of the capital to Ana Paulina Wilhelmina Ernst and Nicasio Segundo Ecury. Her father was an honorary consul to Haiti and a first-generation freeborn man of African descent. Her mother was an orphan from the main island of the Dutch Caribbean; Curaçao. Boy Ecury, her brother, had joined the Dutch resistance fighters, and was executed by the Germans during World War II; he became Aruba's national hero. In total, they were 13 siblings. The mansion in which the family was raised, a noted example of Dutch colonial architecture now houses Aruba's National Archeological Museum. Though her siblings were educated in the Netherlands, Ecury attended school in Canada, studying English literature and journalism. Career Completing her studies, Ecury moved to Curaçao in 1957 and began a career as an English teacher. She taught at Martines Mavo High School and the Nilda Pinto Huishoudschool, while simultaneously giving private lessons in Papiamentu, the most commonly spoken creole language of the Dutch Caribbean. In 1960, Ecury married Wilhelm Eduard Isings, a Dutch businessman. The couple had two children, Caresse Isings Ecury and Wilhelm Alexander Isings, before they divorced in 1964, raising their children as a single mother. Ecury's interest in promoting Papiamentu led her, after World War II, to act in plays and translate the works of renowned authors into a language with which local audiences could understand. Prior to that time, the Catholic Church and government had restricted use of Papiamentu, as a means of asserting a unified cultural identity. She co-founded a theatrical group, Thalia, in 1967 and was known for adapting plays from English, French and Spanish to imbue them with a Caribbean sensitivity.