Vox Celebrates Rosario Castellanos's 91st Birthday

Yesterday was the birthday of feminist Mexican poet Rosario Castellanos. At Vox, learn about Castellanos's impact on poetry and social justice.

Today’s Google Doodle celebrates Rosario Castellanos, one of the most important Mexican woman writers of the 20th century, who was born on May 25, 1925. She died in 1974.

Castellanos wrote poetry, essays, short stories, and novels. The daughter of wealthy parents who lost most of their money under Lázaro Cárdenas’s land reform, Castellanos produced work that grappled with class, nationality, and gender. Her master’s thesis, Sobre cultura femenina ("On Feminine Culture") has been described as "the intellectual starting point for the liberation of Mexican women." Wrote fellow Mexican poet José Emilio Pacheco, "Nobody in her time had as clear a consciousness of the twofold condition of being a woman and a Mexican."

So today, on what would be Castellanos’s 91st birthday, let’s take a moment to talk about her work. In particular, let’s look at the title poem from her 1927 collection, Poesía no eres tú (Poetry Is Not You, published in English as The Selected Poems of Rosario Castellanos).

"Poetry Is Not You" is a response to one of the most celebrated poems in the Spanish language. That poem is by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, the Spanish romantic poet, and it’s called "Rima 21."

Continue learnin' at Vox.