(1925-1974) diplomat, novelist, poet, short-story writer, playwright, critic
Born in Mexico City, Rosario Castellanos grew up in the town of Comitan, Chiapas, Mexico, close to the Guatemalan border. She was educated at the University of Mexico, where she eventually taught literature, although her work as a novelist and poet was the major source of her income. Her familiarity with the lives of the Indians of Chiapas and Guatemala caused her to focus on their plight in many of her works.
Castellanos began her writing career as a poet, publishing her first book of poems, Trajectory of Dust, in 1948. She continued to write many volumes of poetry, including Poetry Is Not You (1972), which focused on human frailty, the limitations of love, and the problems generated by social injustice. Her first novel, The Nine Guardians, first appeared in 1958 and was translated into English in 1970. The story tells of a seven-year-old girl who fights the prevailing exploitation of the indigenous (native) people, as well as social and gender prejudice prevalent in the 1930s in Chiapas. The Nine Guardians won the 1958 Chiapas Prize.
Castellanos’s involvement in the arts and her efforts on behalf of the Mexican feminist movement and indigenous Mexican women led her to be a cultural promoter at the Institute of Science and Arts in Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas. Her play, The Eternal Feminine, published posthumously in 1975, was first performed in Mexico in 1976 and is considered among the most original and important feminist works of literature in Latin America today.
Castellanos’s 1960 collection of short stories, City of Kings, which focuses on the deceitful treatment of the Chiapa people by white landowners, won the Xavier Vaillaurrutia prize, and her novel, Labors of Darkness (1962), earned the 1962 Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz prize, the 1967 Carlos Trouyat Prize in Letters, and the 1972 Elias Sourasky Prize in Letters. When she accidentally died of electrocution while serving as Mexico’s ambassador to Israel, Rosario Castellanos was regarded as Mexico’s major 20th-century female novelist, a title she continues to hold.
Another Work by Rosario Castellanos
A Rosario Castellanos Reader. Translated by Maureen Ahern et al. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1988.
A Work about Rosario Castellanos
Bonifaz Caballero, Oscar. Remembering Rosario: A Personal Glimpse into the Life and Works of Rosario Castellanos. Translated by Myralyn F. Allgood. Potomac, Md.: Scripta Humanistica, 1990.
