56 Facts About Elena Poniatowska

Elena Poniatowska left France for Mexico when she was ten to escape World War II.

Elena Poniatowska is considered "Mexico's grande dame of letters" and is still an active writer.

Elena Poniatowska's mother was French-born heiress Maria Dolores Paulette Amor de Yturbe, whose Mexican family lost land and fled Mexico after Porfirio Diaz was ousted during the Mexican Revolution.

Elena Poniatowska's extended family includes an archbishop, the primate of Poland, a musician, French politicians, and several writers and statesmen, including Benjamin Franklin.

Elena Poniatowska was raised in France by a grandfather who was a writer and a grandmother who showed her unflattering photographs of Mexico, including some in National Geographic depicting Africans, saying they were Mexican indigenes, and scared her and her siblings with stories about cannibalism there.

World War II broke out when Elena Poniatowska was a child.

Elena Poniatowska's father remained in France to fight, participating later in D-Day in Normandy.

Elena Poniatowska began her education in France at Vouvray on the Loire.

Elena Poniatowska learned Spanish from her nanny and people on the streets during her time in Mexico as a young girl.

Elena Poniatowska is the mother of three children, Emmanuel, Felipe, and Paula, and the grandmother of five.

Elena Poniatowska has published novels, nonfiction books, journalistic essays, and many forewords and prologues to books on Mexican artists.

Elena Poniatowska began her writing career in 1953 with Excelsior and the next year with the publication Novedades de Mexico, both of which she still occasionally writes for.

Elena Poniatowska's first writing assignments were interviews of famous people and society columns related to Mexico's upper class.

Elena Poniatowska's first published interview was with the ambassador of the United States.

Elena Poniatowska says she began "like a donkey", knowing nothing and learning on the job.

Elena Poniatowska was first published under her French name, Helene, but later changed it to Elena, and sometimes used Anel.

Elena Poniatowska published her first book, Lilus Kikus, in 1954, and since then has done both journalism and creative writing.

Elena Poniatowska emerged as a subtly present female voice in a patriarchal society, even as she was called "Elenita" and her work was often dismissed as naive interviews and children's literature.

Elena Poniatowska began writing on social issues after a visit to Lecumberri, a prison, to interview several incarcerated railway workers who had gone on strike.

Elena Poniatowska found prisoners eager to talk and share their life stories.

Elena Poniatowska is one of the founders of La Jornada newspaper; Fem, a feminist magazine; Siglo XXI, a publishing house; and Cineteca Nacional, the national film institute.

Elena Poniatowska's works have been translated into English, Polish, French, Danish, and German, starting in the 1990s.

Elena Poniatowska translated Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street into Spanish.

Elena Poniatowska wrote a play, Meles y Teleo: apuntes para una comedia, a year after the birth of son Emmanuel.

Elena Poniatowska has published biographies of the Nobel laureate Octavio Paz and artist Juan Soriano.

Elena Poniatowska often gives presentations and is especially sought for talks and seminars in the United States.

Elena Poniatowska is considered to be Mexico's "grande dame" of letters but she has not been recognized around the world like other prolific Latin American writers of her generation.

Elena Poniatowska has not been fully integrated into Mexico's elite, never receiving diplomatic appointments, like Carlos Fuentes, and turning down political opportunities.

Fuentes once said that Elena Poniatowska was too busy in the city's slums or shopping for groceries to have time for him and others.

Elena Poniatowska says that such remarks show that she is considered more of a maid, a cook, or even a janitor in the "great House of Mexican Literature".

For over 30 years, Elena Poniatowska has taught a weekly writing workshop.

Elena Poniatowska's work is a cross between literary fiction and historical construction.

Elena Poniatowska began to produce major works in the 1960s and her work matured in the 1970s, when she turned to producing works in put herself in solidarity with those who are oppressed politically and economically against those in power.

Elena Poniatowska's writing style is free, lacking solemnity, colloquial and close.

Elena Poniatowska's works are impregnated with a sense of fatalism.

Elena Poniatowska speaks and writes about them even though she herself is a member of Mexico's elite, using her contacts as such on others' behalf.

Elena Poniatowska is not an impartial writer as she acts as an advocate for those who she feels have no voice.

Elena Poniatowska feels that a personal relationship with her subjects is vital.

Elena Poniatowska stated to La Jornada that the student movement of 1968 left a profound mark on her life and caused her consciousness to change as students were murdered by their own police.

Elena Poniatowska has visited political and other prisoners in jail, especially strikers and the student protestors of 1968.

Elena Poniatowska was arrested twice when observing demonstrations.

Elena Poniatowska has involved herself in the causes of her protagonists which are generally women, farm workers and laborers, and include the indigenous, such as the Zapatistas in Chiapas in the 1990s.

Elena Poniatowska puts many in touch with those on the left side of Mexico's and the world's political spectrum although she is not officially affiliated with any of them.

Elena Poniatowska considers herself a feminist to the bone and looks upon civil movements with sympathy and enthusiasm.

Elena Poniatowska became involved in Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's 2005 presidential campaign.

Elena Poniatowska wrote about the seven-week occupation of the Zocalo that followed Lopez Obrador's loss in 2006.

Elena Poniatowska blames Mexico's businessmen and the United States for his loss as well as Lopez Obrador's naivete.

Elena Poniatowska found out about the massacre on the evening of October 2,1968, when her son was only four months old.

Elena Poniatowska did the same after the 1985 Mexico City earthquake.

Elena Poniatowska's book about this event Nada, nadie, las voces del temblor was a compilation of eyewitness accounts not only to the destruction of the earthquake, but to the incompetence and corruption of the government afterwards.

Elena Poniatowska received this award again in 1992 with her novel Tinisima.

In 2001, Elena Poniatowska received the Jose Fuentes Mares National Prize for Literature in 2001 as well as the annual prize for best novel by Spanish book publishing house Alfaguara, Alfaguara Novel Prize for her novel La piel del cielo.

Elena Poniatowska won the Romulo Gallegos Prize in 2007 with her book El Tren pasa primero.

Elena Poniatowska has received honorary doctorates from Mexico's National University UNAM, Sinaloa state university Universidad Autonoma de Sinaloa, the New School of Social Research in New York city, the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana of Mexico and the University of Puerto Rico.

Elena Poniatowska was selected to receive Mexico's National Literary Prize, but she declined it, insisting that it should instead go to Elena Garro, although neither woman ultimately received it.

In 2013, Elena Poniatowska won Spain's Premio Cervantes Literature Award, the most prestigious Spanish-language literary award for an author's lifetime works, becoming the fourth woman to receive such recognition, following Maria Zambrano, Dulce Maria Loynaz, and Ana Maria Matute.