In what was at first meant to be a short essay about the influential Mexican writer Elena Garro (1916-1988), Jazmina Barrera's deep curiosity and exploration give us a singular portrait of a complex life. Sifting through the writer's archives at Princeton, Barrera is repeatedly thwarted in her attempt to fully know her subject.
Traditional means of research - the correspondence, photos, and books - serve only to complicate and cloud the woman and her work. Who was Elena Garro, really? She was a writer, a founder of 'magical realism', a dancer. A devotee to the tarot and the I Ching. A socialite and activist on behalf of indigenous Mexicans.
She was a mother and a lover who repeatedly shook off (and cheated on) her manipulative husband, Nobel-laureate Octavio Paz. And above all, she wrote with simmering anger and glittering imagination. The Queen of Swords is a portrait of a woman that also serves as an alternative history of Mexico City; a cry-out for justice; and an homage to the unknowable.
It transcends mere biography, supplanting something tidy and authoritative for a sprawling experiment in understanding.
| Format |
Inbunden |
| Omfång |
264 sidor |
| Språk |
Engelska |
| Förlag |
Two Lines Press |
| Utgivningsdatum |
2025-11-11 |
| ISBN |
9781949641875 |
