literatura de méxico

In honor of Cinco de Mayo, I thought I'd put up a list of some Mexican writers to check out in all your free time. I tried to link to English translations where possible.

The Book of Lamentations, Rosario Castellanos (1962)

Thirty years before the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas brought this little-known corner of Mexico to the world's notice, Mexican author Rosario Castellanos created a similar rebellion in her 1962 novel The Book of Lamentations. Castellanos has framed her story, which is set in the 1930s, around an actual 1860s uprising of Maya Indians against the Chiapan white ruling class. History and fiction meld seamlessly, mainly because conditions in the Chiapas Castellanos knew as a child hadn't changed much in the intervening 70 years; as late as the 1920s, impoverished Indians still served as mules, carrying white landowners strapped to their backs.

The Answer/La Respuesta, Sor Juana Ines De la Cruz (1994)

After Sor Juana (1648-95) was overheard privately refuting certain arguments made by a Portuguese Jesuit concerning God's greatest gift to humanity, the Bishop of Puebla asked for a written copy of the refutation, published it without the nun's knowledge, and added to it a pseudonymous reprimand. It was this disingenuous reminder not to meddle in the affairs of men that prompted Sor Juana to write The Answer. (See also Sor Juana, or The Traps of Faith by Octavio Paz.)

The Astonishing Story of the Saint of Cabora, Brianda Domecq (1998)

Mexican novelist Brianda Domecq has painted a fictional portrait of legendary nineteenth-century Mexican heroine Teresa Urrea, commonly known as the Saint of Cabora. The illegitimate daughter of a Yaqui Indian servant and a hard-hearted ranch owner, young Teresa was determined to capture her indifferent father's attention and become a welcome member of his family. After educating herself and gaining her father's recognition, Teresa began exhibiting signs of extraordinary healing powers. As her fame as a healer began to spread, she became a spiritual icon for the ill and underprivileged and was eventually accused of organizing a subversive peasant revolution aimed at undermining the harsh dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz. Juxtaposing Teresa's story with that of a contemporary scholar obsessed with unearthing the true details of Urrea's life, Domecq has fashioned a psychologically compelling tale of a seemingly ordinary woman who managed to overcome societal constraints in order to fulfill her remarkable destiny.

The Labyrinth of Solitude, Octavio Paz (1950)

The Labyrinth of Solitude addresses issues that are both seemingly eternal and resoundingly contemporary: the nature of political power in post-conquest Mexico, the relation of Native Americans to Europeans, the ubiquity of official corruption. Noting these matters earned Paz no small amount of trouble from the Mexican leadership, but it also brought him renown as a social critic. Paz, who went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, later voiced his disillusionment with all political systems--as the Mexican proverb has it, "all revolutions degenerate into governments"--but his call for democracy in this book has lately been reverberating throughout Mexico, making it timely once again.

The Skin of the Sky, Elena Poniatowska (2004)

Mexico is as much a character in Poniatowska's epic novels of personal discovery, political awakenings, and cosmic heartache as the questing men and women she so poignantly animates. In her latest munificent work, the author of Here's to You, Jesusa (2001) and Tinisima (1996) portrays an inquisitive, stargazing boy who, against tremendous odds, becomes a renowned astronomer.

Pedro Paramo, Juan Rulfo (1955)

A masterpiece of the surreal, this stunning novel from Mexico depicts a man's strange quest for his heritage. Beseeched by his dying mother to locate his father, Pedro Paramo, whom they fled from years ago, Juan Preciado sets out for Comala. Comala is a town alive with whispers and shadows - a place seemingly populated only by memories and hallucinations.