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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class. It's a production of I

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey y'all, I'm Eves and welcome to This

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Speaker 1: Day in History Class, a podcast that proves you can

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Speaker 1: never know enough about history. Today is the day was made.

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Speaker 1: Mexican writer Rosario Castellanos was born in Mexico City. Castianos's

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Speaker 1: work touched on issues of culture and gender in Mexico,

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Speaker 1: and she is considered one of the most influential Mexican

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Speaker 1: writers of the twentieth century. Rosario spent most of her

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Speaker 1: childhood in Comitan, in southern Mexico. She was a solitary

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Speaker 1: and observant child, and at a young age she began

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Speaker 1: to recognize the poverty in which the Mayans who worked

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Speaker 1: her family's land lived. She also realized that she was

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Speaker 1: treated differently than her younger brother. These experiences and perspective

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Speaker 1: later influenced her writing. But Rosario's brother died young of

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Speaker 1: appendicitis and the family lost their land when Mexican President

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Speaker 1: Lozado Cardenas instituted a reform program that ex appropriated and

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Speaker 1: redistributed land. She later referred to this event as a

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Speaker 1: benefit to her life, since it freed her from the

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Speaker 1: restricted life she might have had if they had kept

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Speaker 1: the land. When she was a teenager, the family moved

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Speaker 1: to Mexico City. She later wrote that the switch from

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Speaker 1: a rural, aristocratic lifestyle to a middle class one in

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Speaker 1: the city quote destroyed the certainty of my racial, social,

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Speaker 1: and economic superiority. She published her first poems when she

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Speaker 1: was still a teen, but in ninety her parents died suddenly.

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Speaker 1: Though she faced loneliness and the guilt of being a survivor,

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Speaker 1: Castellanos found inspiration to seriously pursue a career in literature,

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Speaker 1: and she published two books of poetry that year. Both

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Speaker 1: of them revolved around themes of a loneness and mortality.

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Speaker 1: Garcianos found her stride as a student at the National

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Speaker 1: Autonomous University of Mexico. She became part of a group

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Speaker 1: of writers who would meet and discuss each other's work.

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Speaker 1: Her thesis, sober Femina or on Feminine Culture, is considered

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Speaker 1: by some critics to be a key work of feminist thought.

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Speaker 1: She got her master's degree in philosophy from the university

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Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty. When she graduated, she and her friend,

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Speaker 1: writer Dolores Castro, traveled around Europe together, having gained a

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Speaker 1: new perspective on what it meant to be Mexican and

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Speaker 1: to be a foreigner. She returned to her home state

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Speaker 1: of Chiapas and began working for the National Indigenous Institute,

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Speaker 1: which provided aid to Native Americans in Mexico. She also

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Speaker 1: gave her inherited land to the laborers who worked it,

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Speaker 1: and in five she published Balloon Kanan, a novel that

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Speaker 1: earned her critical acclaim. It portrayed Native American characters as

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Speaker 1: complex and round, rather than one dimensional in flat as

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Speaker 1: other works often depicted them. Castaiano admired French philosopher Simonvey's work,

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Speaker 1: and this was evident in Castelliano's themes of oppression and

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Speaker 1: submission as they related to gender and culture. Throughout the

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, she taught at the National Autonomous University of

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Speaker 1: Mexico and universities in the United States. Castaiano's work was

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Speaker 1: inspired by writers like Saint Teresa of Avila, Sarjuana Enez

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Speaker 1: de la Cruz, Gabriela Mistral, Simone de Beauvois, and Virginia Wolf.

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Speaker 1: In her writing, Castellano often explored the reality of being

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Speaker 1: a woman and being Mexican. One of Castellano's best remembered works.

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Speaker 1: The novel The Book of Lamentations was published in nineteen

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Speaker 1: sixty two. It tells the story of a fictionalized Mayan

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Speaker 1: uprising that takes place in the nineteen thirties. In nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy one, Casteano was appointed as the Mexican ambassador to Israel.

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Speaker 1: In Israel, she learned to speak Hebrew and continued publishing

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Speaker 1: poetry and journalism. The next year, she published her collective

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Speaker 1: poetry in a work called Poetry Is Not You. Tragically.

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Speaker 1: Castiano died by electrocution in nine seventy four, when she

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Speaker 1: was just forty nine years old. She's buried in the

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Speaker 1: Rotunda of Illustrious Persons in Mexico City. I'm Eve Jeff

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Speaker 1: Coote and hopefully you know a little more about history

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Speaker 1: today than you did yesterday. And if you have any

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Speaker 1: comments or suggestions, you can send them to us at

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Speaker 1: this day at iHeart media dot com. If you like

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Speaker 1: to email us, you can also hit us up on

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Speaker 1: social media where at t D I HC podcast. Thanks

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Speaker 1: so much for listening to the show and we'll see

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Speaker 1: you tomorrow. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit

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