Author Mavis Biesanz Dies at 88
By Rod Hughes
Mavis Biesanz, non-fiction author and a longtime resident of Costa Rica, died last week at CIMA Hospital in Escazú last week of an acute lung infection at the age of 88. She is best known for the definitive book on Costa Rican culture, ¨The Ticos: Culture and Social Change in Costa Rica,” co-authored with son Richard and daughter Karen.
She was the widow of sociology professor John Biesanz who died here in 1995 and ghost wrote several textbooks for McGraw Hill in New York in his name. This writer had the privilege of browsing through several of her works, now out of print. Unlike all too many dull, pedestrian texts inflicted on college students, the ones she wrote sparkled with intelligence and clear, concise writing.
She lived long enough to see her final book, a bilingual tome of stories and poems titled “A Year with Carmen,” hit the bookstores under the UNED imprint. Her memoires about her childhood in Minnesota in the Finnish-American community of immigrants was published more than a decade ago by the University of Minnesota Press.