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Elena Poniatowska's journey from Polish princess to Mexico's First Lady of literature
EVEN MONTHS AFTER ITS RELEASE IN November 1996, Elena Poniatowska's latest novella "Paseo de la Reforma" is still on the bestseller charts of most Mexico City bookstores, has sold more than 35,000 copies, and it's received favorable reviews from national and international critics. But the author insists, "It was the easiest novel I ever wrote. In reality, I wrote it so that Plaza y Janes (the publishing house) would publish my mother's book of memoirs, "Nomeolvides" ("Forget-me-not"). Little did my editors imagine that my mother's autobiography would be such a success! It's already in its third edition and has sold more than 15,000 copies."
"Paseo de la Reforma" is the story of Ashby, a boy from Mexico's traditional upper classes who, due to an accident, is hospitalized in a government ward where he soon becomes aware of the vast differences between his life and that of the majority of Mexicans, a theme that Elena Poniatowska has explored passionately during her more than forty years as a journalist, intellectual and author in Mexico. The novel also constitutes a reworking of the testimonial novel, a sub-genre that Poniatowska introduced to Mexico with her monumental chronicle of the 1968 student uprising "La Noche de Tlatelolco" ("Massacre in Mexico"), as "Paseo de Reforma" is, to a certain extent, based upon memories of friends and acquaintances from her own privileged childhood in Mexico City.
Moreover, the literary experience embodied in Ashby's rude awakening parallels that of the author, whose North American grandmother warned her about the Mexicans when Elena was just a little girl growing up in France. With a mischevious grin, Elena explains how "grandmother used to show us pictures of barbarians from equatorial Africa with bones in their hair and a human arm cooking under a fire, who she insisted were indeed the inhabitants of Mexico. I, needless to say, was petrified!" THE WRITING LIFE
Helene Elizabeth Amelie Paula Dolores Poniatowska, better known to her readers in the diminutive "Elentina," leads me through a tiny garden filled with roses, azaleas and camellias that connive under the shade of an enormous flowering tabachin, from whose branches hang bottles of sweetened water, feast for the humming birds...