Elena Poniatowska

Hélène Elizabeth Louise Amélie Paula Dolores Poniatowska Amor (Paris, May 19, 1932), known professionally as Elena Poniatowska, is a French writer, journalist and activist with Mexican nationality on his mother's side, descendant of Polish nobility on his father's side. Her literary work has a marked social and political orientation in which her chronicles stand out under the formula, which she has come to call, testimonial polyphony. His most recognized work is La noche de Tlatelolco, a collection of accounts of the massacre in the Plaza de Tlatelolco on October 2, 1968. He has received many international and national recognitions and awards, including which highlights the Cervantes Prize in 2013.

In 2022, as part of its 90th anniversary, the country's Ministry of Culture organized a national tribute at the Palace of Fine Arts.

Biography

Daughter of Jean Joseph Évremond Sperry Poniatowski, French nobleman of Polish descent, and Frenchwoman of Mexican descent María de los Dolores Amor de Yturbe (known as Paula Amor), Elena Poniatowska Amor was born in France on May 19, 1932 with the name of Hélène Elizabeth Louise Amélie Paula Dolores Poniatowska Amor. Her mother was born in 1913 in Mexico in the bosom of a Porfirian family exiled after the Mexican Revolution. Her grandfather, Andreas, was the great-great-grandson of Kazimierz Poniatowski, brother of Estanislao II Poniatowski, king of the Republic of Two Nations, a country that was an elective and not hereditary monarchy; her paternal grandmother was American. On her maternal side, she is of Russian descent.

Poniatowska in 2008

She is the niece of the Mexican poet Pita Amor (1918-2000); Her family has illustrious ancestors such as an archbishop, a musician and some other writers. Due to her ideas and ancestry, she is also known as The Red Princess.

Childhood and studies

Elena Poniatowska's family emigrated from France to Mexico as a result of World War II. Elena arrived at the age of ten with her mother and her sister Sofía (Kitzya) in Mexico City. Meanwhile, her father continued fighting to meet with them after the war.

In Mexico, around 1943, both girls learned Spanish from their nanny Magdalena Castillo. She continued her primary studies at the Windsor School and studied for a year at the Liceo de México; She maintained her level of French through the classes taught by the teacher Betie Sauve and learned piano and dance with her sister. Jan, Elena and Sofia's little brother, was born in 1947.

In 1949, she was sent to the United States to study, first boarding at a Catholic school in Philadelphia, the Eden Hall Convent of the Sacred Heart (Torresdale, Pennsylvania), and later at Manhattanville College in New York .

First works

Back in Mexico, Poniatowska studied shorthand to later work as a bilingual secretary, but never completed high school. She then decided to dedicate herself to journalism.She began her journalistic career in 1953. She first worked at the newspaper Excelsior , where she signed her chronicles as Hélène . In her first interviews, she visited the singer Amália Rodrigues, Manuelita Reyes, the painter María Izquierdo, the writer Juan Rulfo and the actress Dolores del Río. She published, for a year, an interview every day. At that time she began to be interested in social issues and the role of Mexican women.

In 1955, he began his collaboration in the newspaper Novedades , which he would continue throughout his life. He wrote for the newspaper La Jornada. His interviews with Mexican and foreign authors achieved great success, and later some of them were brought together in Palabras cruzadas (1961) and Todo México (1990). Poniatowska has written for numerous publications, both national and international. This year in which these collaborations begin, her first child, Emmanuel, was born in Rome. In 1957, he received a scholarship from the Centro Mexicano de Escritores for young creators and, in 1959, he interviewed the Mexican astrophysicist Guillermo Haro, whom he married in 1968. A job that would mark his literary career is the work who began in 1962 as an assistant to anthropologist Oscar Lewis, one of the founders of testimonial writing.

The first book of fiction he published was Lilus Kikus in 1962, a collection of short stories, followed in 1963 by It all began on Sunday. In 1965 he traveled to Poland with his mother, and from there he sent News a series of chronicles in which "questioning the established sense of morality, justice and in general, the absurdity of life".

Signing book about Mariana Yampolsky at the Museum of Popular Art in 2012.

In 1964, he heard a woman scream from the roof of a building in Mexico City. She was Josefina Bohórquez (1900-1988), the washerwoman who will discover the underworld of the capital. Elena began meeting with her every Wednesday to interview him. From the notes of her dialogues will be born Until I don't see you my Jesus (1969).

International recognition

International recognition came to him with his books of testimonies: Hasta no verte Jesús mío, and La noche de Tlatelolco (1971), about the massacre that occurred on the 2nd October 1968 in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, with the latter there was great controversy because Luis González de Alba accused her of having stolen his testimonies, this claim lasted until the last days of this author because in his last column &# 34;We can divine the future..." he still remembers this betrayal.

In the year of that national tragedy, Poniatowska married the Mexican astrophysicist Guillermo Haro (1913-1988), with whom she had two more children: Felipe in 1968 and Paula in 1970. A few months later, her brother Jan died in a car accident and the writer's father, who died shortly after the emotional impact. In 1988 Guillermo Haro, her husband, died. On September 19, 1985, an earthquake struck Mexico City, during which Poniatowska would write articles that would later form a collective chronicle published in 1988 under the title Nothing, nobody, the voices of the tremor.

In addition to her works, Poniatowska has carried out various activities such as visiting numerous universities in the United States and Europe, collaborating with various publications, writing prologues, participating in book presentations, making short films, being a member of the editorial board of the magazine feminist Fem and co-founder of Editorial Siglo XXI and the Cineteca Nacional.

Despite her aristocratic origins, Poniatowska has been a politically leftist and human rights advocate who has influenced Mexico's most prominent intellectual sectors with her views. As the editorial Alfaguara says, she is a " committed journalist and writer " who " has often put her pen at the service of the most just causes ".

In the 2006 presidential elections, he supported Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the candidate of the Coalition for the Good of All, who has been president of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). Faced with criticism from some quarters, 24 prominent foreign writers, including 1998 Nobel Prize winner José Saramago, signed a letter in their support. That same year, he participated in July, along with other intellectuals, in the signing of a leaflet condemning the Israeli attacks on Lebanon.

Starting in 2007, the government of Mexico City, through the Ministry of Culture, established the Elena Poniatowska Ibero-American Novel Prize, endowed with 500,000 pesos. The winner of the first edition of this contest was the Mexican novelist and philosophy graduate Álvaro Uribe, for his novel Expediente del atentado.

In 2011, the Elena Poniatowska Foundation was created with the objectives of organizing, disseminating, and preserving the historical archive of the writer and her family, supporting the social groups that she has portrayed in her work, and promoting public debate on Mexican culture.. In 2013 she was awarded the Cervantes Prize. Poniatowska is the first Mexican writer to win the award and the fourth woman in the 38-year history of this award. In addition, his is the fifth Cervantes that an author from Mexico has received.

In 2017, Elena Poniatowska participated in the Spanish dubbing of the Disney Pixar animated film, Coco, voicing "Socorro 'Coco' Rivera".

Awards and distinctions

• Mazatlan Prize for Literature 1971, by Until I see you, my Jesus..
• National Journalism Award of Mexico 1978, for his interviews.
• Doctorate honoris causa, awarded by the Autonomous University of Sinaloa, 1979.
• Doctorate honoris causa, granted by the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México, 1980.
• Manuel Buendía Award 1987, for relevant merits as a writer and journalist (torted by several universities).
• Coatlicue Award 1990 as the woman of the year, awarded by Feminist debate and Divas.
• Mazatlan Prize for Literature 1992, by Tiny.
• Premio Juchimán de Plata 1993 en ciencias y técnica de la comunicación, bestowed by Fundación Juchimán.
• Doctorate honoris causa, awarded by the New School of Social Research in New York, 1994.
• Doctorate honoris causa, awarded by Florida Atlantic University, Boca Ratón, 1995.
• Alfaguara Award of Novela 2001, by The skin of the sky.
• Doctorate honoris causa, awarded by the National Autonomous University of Mexico, 2001.
• Doctorate honoris causa, awarded by Manhattanville College, New York, 2001.
• National Prize for Science and Arts in the Language and Literature Area 2002
• María Moors Cabot Award 2004, awarded by Columbia University.
• Doctorate honoris causa, awarded by the Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, 2002.
• Premio Rómulo Gallegos 2007, by The train passes first.
• Martin International Strachit Award, 2008.
• National Award of the Association of Radio Difusores Poland, 2008.
• International Fray Domínico Weinzierl Award, 2009.
• Agustin Delgado Award, 2009.
• Presea Rosario Castellanos, 2010.
• Eugenio Galo Espejo Cevallos Award, 2010.
• Doctorate honoris causa, University of Puerto Rico, 2010.
• Breve Library Award 2011 for Leonora, novel biography by Leonora Carrington
• Mention of Honor and Presea Diego Marcelo Morales Ytalco 2011.
• Doctorate honoris causa, awarded by the University of Paris VIII Vincennes-Saint-Denis, 2011.
• Alberto Spencer Schwiebert Rosalito International Prize, 2012.
• Frida Dimitra Kahlo Witteven-Villagomez Award, Bolivia, 2012.
• Appointment of a train from Mexico City Metro with its name, 2012.
• Mention of honor and distinction "De las Higuerillas" by OG Mandino University 2012.
• Cervantes Award 2013, delivered on 23 April 2014 at the Paraninfo of the University of Alcalá.
• José Emilio Pacheco Medal by the International Fair of the Yucatan Reading (Filey) 2014.
• Medalla Bellas Artes (National Institute of Fine Arts), 2014.
• Doctorate honoris causa, awarded by the University of Sonora, 2014.
• Doctorate honoris causa, awarded by the Universidad Autónoma de Chiapas, 2014.
• Doctorate honoris causa, awarded by the Michoacana University of San Nicolás de Hidalgo, September 15, 2015.
• Doctorate honoris causa, awarded by the Complutense University of Madrid, 2015.
• Doctorate honoris causa, awarded by the University of Guadalajara, 2015.
• Doctorate honoris causa, awarded by the Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí, 2016.

Doctorate honoris causa, awarded by the University of Ixtlahuaca CUI, 2017.

• Appointment of a New Laredo High School with its name, 2016.
• The Municipal Sports Unit "Elena Poniatowska" in Texcoco.
• Doctorate honoris causa, awarded by the National Institute of Astrophysics, Optics and Electronics, 2021.
• Homage at the Palace of Fine Arts in the framework of its 90 years, 2022.
• Doctorate honoris causa, awarded by César Vallejo University of Peru, 2022.

Predecessor: Isaac Rosa	Premio Rómulo Gallegos 2007	Successor: William Ospina
Predecessor: Guillermo Saccomanno	Breve Library Award 2011	Successor: Javier Calvo
Predecessor: José Manuel Caballero Bonald	Miguel de Cervantes Award 2013	Successor: Juan Goytisolo

Description of his work

Poniatowska's work has been described, according to the same Cervantes jury, as «a brilliant literary career in various genres, particularly in narrative and in her exemplary dedication to journalism. Her work stands out for her firm commitment to contemporary history. She is the author of emblematic works that describe the 20th century from an international and inclusive projection. Elena Poniatowska is one of the most powerful voices in Spanish literature these days."

Genres

Poniatowska has written short stories, novels, chronicles, theater and poetry. As a creator, she relies on the resources of the interview and journalistic and historical research, and perhaps for this reason her narrative has a lot of testimony, of investigative reporting.

In her work, the biographies of renowned women such as Tina Modotti, Angelina Beloff, Leonora Carrington and many others stand out.

To refer to the chronicles written by Poniatowska, the term testimonial polyphony is usually used, linked to a political proposal of representation. The author resorts to the testimony to build the narrative, being polyphonic because it collects opinions from different characters who star in the events reviewed, usually with very different profiles. In her chronicles, the testimonies intertwine and confront, with a counterpoint result. It is an exercise in registering not only the opinion, but also the way of expressing it.

Influences

His use of interviews and testimony may have been marked by his work as an assistant to Oscar Lewis, where he learned to apply his sociological techniques. However, Carlos Monsiváis points out that Poniatowska circumvents the theoretical prejudice of & # 34; the culture of poverty & # 34;, popular precisely thanks to Lewis with her work on the neighborhoods of Mexico City. But, from similar techniques, Poniatowska reaches opposite conclusions that seek a moral answer.

Constant themes in his work

Among the constants of his work we find the presence of women and their vision of the world, Mexico City with its beauty and its problems, social struggles, daily life, literature, the denunciation of injustices and criticism social.

Its bibliography pursues a piece of advice from Gabriel García Márquez: «to do journalism so as not to lose ground, to learn about small life, where the great stories are found between the everyday and the unusual». Octavio Paz pointed out that, in his prose, the "art of listening" is discovered.

"His writings, especially his chronicles, are an excellent source of cultural, political, sociological, economic and historical information from Mexico and its people," says an English-language encyclopedia.

In his sonnets to Elena Poniatowska, written on the occasion of the publication of their collected works, the poet José Emilio Pacheco refers:

It's too Mexico to live.

For us and everything is amazed
In your books. His light blinder

Turn on our night and make sense

Ponitowska is not only a writer attentive to major events, such as the events in Plaza Tlatelolco in 1968 or the earthquake in Mexico in 1985, but also to the events that penetrate the life of the silenced people. The drama and the fight against silence will not only be present on a political and social level, but also on a personal level, as she shows in Dear Diego, Quiela embraces you , a collection of letters that do not get more than silence in response.

Both her urban chronicles and many of her novels house a representation of the silence of thousands of inhabitants of Mexico City, but also of the entire country, whose voices are silenced, according to the author, by a cultural and political tradition that denies the word to the marginalized population. For Poniatowska, this "vocal handicap" it is a consequence of the mechanisms of domination of a hegemonic system built on the basis of abandoned peripheries. And she not only denounces the silence from the power of the Administration, but also from capitalist and economic companies and from the rest of citizens indifferent to inequalities.

Another characteristic of his work is the mix between reality and fiction. Just as Truman Capote wrote In Cold Blood , narrating based on characters she interviewed, Poniatowska crafts her own fictional works using testimonial literature.

Disappointment is another common theme in the author's novels. The Mexicanist Juan Bruce-Novoa indicates that many of its protagonists learn that society does not want to know their privacy, but instead seeks to make them conform to the image that other people form of them, that they accept an assigned role.

Works

Lilus Kikus

Collection of stories about the magical world of children. Her protagonist is a girl who uses her imagination to go on adventures. Among her dreams, there is the one of having sun nails to be able to read during the night. They are the tender dreams of a girl named Lilus Kikus for whom life began too soon. Lilus knew how to bring order to the world just by being still, sitting on the spiral staircase of her imagination, where the most amazing things happened, while her eyes watched as the dew vanished and a cat bit its tail or the smile of a smile grew. spring [...] Everything in this book is magical and is full of sea waves or love like litmus that is only found, only in the eyes of children.

Until I see you my Jesus

Inspired by the life of Josefina Bórquez, the author creates her protagonist: Jesusa Palancares. He uses her to narrate her life and her sacrifice as a Oaxacan woman fighting in the Mexican Revolution and, later, living in poverty and working various jobs, including servant, laborer, and medium.

The night of Tlatelolco. Oral history testimonials

It narrates the student massacre of October 2, 1968 in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, also known as the Tlatelolco Housing Complex, compiling a series of testimonies. These testimonies reflect the thoughts and feelings of people for and against the student movement.

The testimonies began to be collected in October and November 1968 and continued until two years later. The film Red Dawn, based on the same events, literally reproduces some of these testimonies.

Dear Diego, Quiela hugs you

An epistolary novel in which a series of false letters are collected. They are messages for the painter Diego Rivera from Angelina Beloff, a Mexican artist of Russian origin and his first wife. Given the painter's lack of response, the development of the novel shows the pain due to the failure of the relationship and the feeling of finding himself the victim of a hoax. The work has been published in Spain by the Impedimenta publishing house in 2014.

Fleur-de-lis

A novel with an autobiographical essence that transmits the impressions of Mariana, a sensitive and intelligent girl who lives fascinated by her mother, Luz. At the start of World War II, the protagonist, along with her sister Sofía and her mother, leave Europe to settle in Mexico City next to her maternal family and the French community, while they wait for the return of their father who is fighting on the front lines..

Skin of Heaven

This book bears witness to the author's relationship with Guillermo Haro, a Mexican astronomer. In it, she denounces the difficulties of scientific work in Latin American countries. In an understated, direct style, she details the limitations they encounter, pitted against devotion and sacrifice for the cause.

This work received the Alfaguara Award in 2001.

The train goes first

This is a book that approaches the history of the railway movement. It is a fictionalized biography that is inspired by the life of Oaxacan Demetrio Vallejo, leader of the 1959 railroad movement and the Mexican labor cause in the 1950s, including the importance of the railroad in Mexican towns and the strike against the abuses of the State and corruption of 1959.

The novel is built with real events and interviews with numerous railroad workers and their wives. It is a mixture between the journalistic and the narrative, since the texts are a version of the real events.

This work received the 2007 Rómulo Gallegos Award.

Sunrise in the Zócalo. The 50 days that confronted Mexico

Chronicle of the 50 days between August and September 2006 in which the Plaza de la Constitución in Mexico City, also known as the Zócalo, and the adjacent streets, were occupied by thousands of people protesting the alleged electoral fraud that kept the right in power.

Publication Timeline

Translations

Into English

• Massacre in Mexico. Columbia, Miss.: Univ. of Missouri Press, 1975 ISBN 0-8262-0817-7.
• Until We Meet Again. Pantheon Books, ISBN 039454479X. ISBN 978-0394544793.
• Nothing, Nobody: The Voices of the Mexico City Earthquake. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995, ISBN 1-56639-344-2.
• Tiny. Transl. by Katherine Silver. NY: Penguin Books, 1998. ISBN 0-14-026876-6 ISBN 0-374-27785-0.
• Lilus Kikus and Other Stories. Transl. and introd. by Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez. Drawings by Leonora Carrington. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2005. ISBN 0-8263-3582-9.
• The Skin of the Sky. Transl. by Deanna Heikkinen. NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2004. ISBN 0-374-26575-5.
• Here's to You, Jesusa!. Transl. by Deanna Heikkinen. NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001. ISBN 0-374-16819-9.
• Soldiers: Women of the Mexican Revolution. Five Points Press, 2006. ISBN 9781933693040 ISBN 978-1933693040.
• The Heart of the Artichoke. Transl. by George Henson. Miami: Alligator Press, 2012. ISBN 0967565898 ISBN 978-0967565897.

To French

• Vie de Jésusa (roman). Trad. de l'espagnol par Michel Sarre. Paris: Gallimard, 1980 (Du monde entier).
• Cher Diego, Quiela t'embrasse. Jamis Rauda (traduction). Éditeur: Actes Sud, 1993. ISBN 2-7427-0011-0. Latest edition: Actes Sud, 2005. ISBN 2-7427-5618-3.
• La fille du philosophe. Nouvelles traduites de l'espagnol (Méxique) par Jamis Rauda. Éditeur: Actes Sud, 1993. ISBN 2-86869-399-7.

Into German

• Stark ist das Schweigen. 4 Reportagen aus Mexiko. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1982 (Suhrkamp-Taschenbuch; 1438) (2nd ed. 1987). ISBN 3-518-37938-0.
• Lieber Diego. Trad.: Astrid Schmitt. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 1988; Taschenbuchausgabe: Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1989 (Suhrkamp-Taschenbuch; 1592). ISBN 3-518-38092-3.
• Jesusa - Ein Leben allem zum Trotz. Trad.: Karin Schmidt. Göttingen: Lamuv-Verlag, 1992 (Lamuv-Taschenbuch; 123). ISBN 3-88977-309-5 (first edition with title: Allem zum Trotz... Das Leben der Jesusa. Trad.: Karin Schmidt. Bornheim-Merten: Lamuv, 1982.)
• Tinissima. Der Lebensroman der Tina Modotti. Trad.: Christiane Barckhausen-Canale. With photographs. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp 1996, ISBN 3-518-40816-X; Pocket Edition: Suhrkamp: 1998 ISBN 3-518-39356-1 [st 2856], 1999 ISBN 978-3-518-39356-7, 2003.

Translations of other works

Elena Poniatowska has also been a translator. She translated into Spanish the renowned novel The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, a Chicago-born Mexican author. It is a work starring a Latino girl who lives in the suburbs of Chicago and, with her adventures, reflects social inequalities and injustices. Cisneros's work, published in 1984, has sold more than two million copies and is recommended reading in institutes in the United States.

Movies

Ancestors

Further reading

English