This thesis focuses on Secretos entre el Alma y Dios, the autobiography or vida of Catalina de Jesús María Herrera (1717-1795), a nun who belonged to the Dominican Convent of Santa Catalina in Quito, Ecuador. Catalina wrote in a direct and engaging style of her monastic life and spirituality. Her text allows us to better understand the society in which she lived and particularly her relationship with her confessor, fray Tomás del Rosario Corrales, to whom she writes her autobiography. Her numerous visions are classified here as divine, evil and death visions. They draw from traditional hagiographic accounts and provide evidence of how Saint Teresa of Ávila’s Libro de la Vida was read in a colonial context. A close-textual reading of Catalina’s vida, sheds light on her claims to have reached God as the expression of a female voice long suppressed in this patriarchal society. / Graduate