Uncivil wars : Elena Garro, Octavio Paz, and the battle for cultural memory / by Sandra Messinger Cypess.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cypess, Sandra Messinger.

Series:

Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long series in Latin American and Latino art and culture.

Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long series in Latin American and Latino art and culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Garro, Elena--Criticism and interpretation.

Garro, Elena.

Paz, Octavio, 1914-1998--Criticism and interpretation.

Paz, Octavio.

National characteristics, Mexican, in literature.

Collective memory--Mexico.

Collective memory.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (262 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Austin : University of Texas Press, 2012.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The first English-language book to place the works of Elena Garro (1916–1998) and Octavio Paz (1914–1998) in dialogue with each other, Uncivil Wars evokes the lives of two celebrated literary figures who wrote about many of the same experiences and contributed to the formation of Mexican national identity but were judged quite differently, primarily because of gender. While Paz’s privileged, prize-winning legacy has endured worldwide, Garro’s literary gifts garnered no international prizes and received less attention in Latin American literary circles. Restoring a dual perspective on these two dynamic writers and their world, Uncivil Wars chronicles a collective memory of wars that shaped Mexico, and in turn shaped Garro and Paz, from the Conquest period to the Mexican Revolution; the Spanish Civil War, which the couple witnessed while traveling abroad; and the student massacre at Tlatelolco Plaza in 1968, which brought about social and political changes and further tensions in the battle of the sexes. The cultural contexts of machismo and ethnicity provide an equally rich ground for Sandra Cypess’s exploration of the tandem between the writers’ personal lives and their literary production. Uncivil Wars illuminates the complexities of Mexican society as seen through a tense marriage of two talented, often oppositional writers. The result is an alternative interpretation of the myths and realities that have shaped Mexican identity, and its literary soul, well into the twenty-first century.

Contents:

Introduction: Uncivil wars

All in the family: Paz and Garro rewrite Mexico's cultural memory

War at home: Betrayals of/in the Mexican Revolution

Love and war don't mix: Garro and Paz in the Spanish Civil War

Tlatelolco: The undeclared war

From civil war to gender war: The battle of the sexes.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0-292-73778-5

OCLC:

800935907