Description: Blending cultural studies, literary analysis, and political history, this book shows how Elena Garro's life and work expose the impasses inherent to the concept of Mexican modernity. This study explores her critique of Mexican modernity and its apologists, as well as her criti...
Review Quotes: "This engaging, readable book by Biron examines Elena Garro's personal and literary relationships, maintaining that readers often find the writer "illegible" due to her contradictory and controversial public interventions. Biron examines Garro's creative work as well as her journalism and interviews to give a more coherent portrait. The chapter on "Critical Confrontations" describes key events that have triggered the discomfort surrounding Garro: the aftermath of the 1968 student massacre at Tlatelolco, when she was accused of naming intellectuals as co-conspirators; an incident in 1965 when Garro championed the rights of dispossessed campesinos by staging a sit-in at a writers' conference; and, more bizarrely, Garro's involvement in the JFK assassination investigation. The author examines Garro's conflicting statements about her identification with feminism, magical realism, and communism, and manages to trace a coherent line in these seemingly erratic and arbitrary pronouncements. Biron helpfully locates the influence of French personalism in Garro's work and life, underscoring her commitment to the individual and idiosyncratic over the collective and imitative. A thought-provoking text that shows how this important Mexican author fits within the literary history of the twentieth century, and that joins other explorations like Sandra Messinger Cypess's Uncivil Wars Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers." --Choice Reviews