Nydia Ecury (2 February 1926 â€" 2 March 2012) was a celebrated
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.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.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. Some of
her most noted translations include Gay bieuw ta traha sòpi stèrki
(1968), which was an interpretation of Alfonso Paso's Cosas de mamá y
papá; Mentira na granèl (1968), a translation of Carlo Goldoni's Il
bugiardo; E Rosa Tatuá (1971), a rendering of Tennessee Williams' The
Rose Tattoo; and Romeo i Julieta (1991), based upon Shakespeare's
Romeo and Juliet. Performing such plays, spurred other native authors
to create new works propagating Papiamento as a language of cultural
expression. Nydia Ecury Biography, NetWorth, Height, Age, Weight, Family, Married, Son, Daughter