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Rosario Castellanos

Biography

Rosario Castellanos was born in Mexico City in 1925. She was raised in Comitán, in the Chiapas region of Mexico. As with her unnamed heroine in Balún-Canán (The Nine Guardians), she was neglected in favour of her brother, who died of appendicitis. Her parents felt that the wrong child had died. In her solitude she turned to literature. Her parents’ land-holdings were confiscated in the land reforms of the 1930s-1940s. She enrolled in the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, where she studied literature and philosophy. She later studied in Madrid. She started writing poetry soon after the death of her parents in 1948. She also worked for various Chiapas organisations and later was Head of Press and Information at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, where she also taught literature. She married a university professor and they had a son but she divorced him after commenting that she was totally monogamous and he was totally polygamous. In 1971 she was appointed Mexican ambassador to Israel, where she also taught Mexican literature. She was killed there in an accident by electric shock in 1974, though it has been suggested that she killed herself. She wrote poetry, plays, essays, stories and novels

Other links

Rosario Castellanos
Rosario Castellanos
Rosario Castellanos (her grave)
Rosario Castellanos (in Spanish)
Rosario Castellanos (in Spanish)
Rosario Castellanos (in Spanish)
Rosario Castellanos (includes texts of several of her poems – in Spanish)
Rosario Castellanos Figueroa (in Spanish)
Rosario Castellanos (selection of her poems – in Spanish)
Rosario Castellanos (selection of her poems – in Spanish)

Bibliography

1948 Trayectoria del polvo (poetry)
1948 Apuntes para una declaración de fe (poetry)
1950 De la vigilia estéril (poetry)
1950 Dos poemas (poetry)
1950 Sobre cultura femenina
1952 Presentación al templo: Poemas (poetry)
1952 El rescate del mundo (poetry)
1957 Balún-Canán (The Nine Guardians) (novel)
1957 Poemas (1953-1955) (poetry)
1959 Al pie de la letra: Poemas (poetry)
1959 Salomé y Judith: Poemas dramáticos (poetry)
1960 Ciudad Real: Cuentos (City of Kings) (stories)
1960 Lívida luz: Poemas (poetry)
1962 Oficio de tinieblas (The Book of Lamentations) (novel)
1964 Los convidados de agosto (stories)
1966 Juicios sumarios: Ensayos
1966 La novela mexicana y su valor testimonial
1969 La corrupción (essay)
1969 Materia memorable (poetry)
1969 La tierra de en medio (poetry)
1971 Álbum de familia (stories)
1972 Poesía no eres tú: Obra poética, 1948-1971 (The Selected Poems of Rosario Castellanos) (poetry)
1973 Mujer que sabe latín (essay)
1974 El uso de la palabra (articles)
1975 El eterno femenino: Farsa
1975 El mar y sus pescaditos (articles)
1984 Bella dama sin piedad y otros poemas
1984 El verso, la palabra y el recuerdo
1985 Medicación en el umbral: Antología poética (Meditation on the Threshold)
1992 La suerte de Teodoro Menedez Acubal (stories)
1988 A Rosario Castellanos Reader: An Anthology of Her Poetry, Short Fiction, Essays, and Drama
1988 The Selected Poems of Rosario Castellanos
1990 Another Way to Be: Selected Works of Rosario Castellanos
1992 Rito de iniciación (novel)
1994 Cuentos de San Cristóbal
1997 Declaración de fe: Reflexiones sobre la situación de la mujer en México
2000 La muerte del tigre y otros cuentos (stories)
2002 Poesía