58 Facts About Elena Poniatowska

Elena Poniatowska was born in Paris to upper-class parents, including her mother whose family fled Mexico during the Mexican Revolution.

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

Elena Poniatowska's best known work is La noche de Tlatelolco about the repression of the 1968 student protests in Mexico City.

Elena Poniatowska is considered to be "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 the ouster of Porfirio Diaz during the Mexican Revolution.

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

Elena Poniatowska was raised in France by a grandfather who was a writer and a grandmother who would show her negative photos about Mexico, including photographs in National Geographic depicting Africans, saying they were Mexican indigenes, and scaring her and her siblings with stories about cannibalism there.

The Second World War broke out in Europe 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 her 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, non-fiction books, journalistic essays, and many forewords and prologues to books on Mexican artists.

Elena Poniatowska began her writing career in 1953 at 21 years of age with the newspaper Excelsior and the next year with a publication called Novedades de Mexico, both of which she still occasionally writes for.

Elena Poniatowska's first writing assignments consisted of 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 stated that she began "like a donkey" knowing nothing and learning on the job.

Elena Poniatowska was first published under her French name of Helene but later changed it to Elena, or sometimes using Anel.

Elena Poniatowska published her first book in 1954, called Lilus Kikus and since then her career has been a mix of journalism and creative writing.

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

Elena Poniatowska progressed by persistence rather than by direct confrontation.

Elena Poniatowska began writing on social issues after a visit to Lecumberri, a famous former 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's best known book of this type is La noche de Tlatelolco which contains the testimonies of the victims of the 1968 student massacre in Mexico City.

Elena Poniatowska is one of the founders of La Jornada newspaper, Fem, a feminist magazine, Siglo XXI a publishing house and the 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 has translated Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street into Spanish.

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

Elena Poniatowska frequently makes presentations at home and abroad in her three languages and is especially sought for talks and seminars in the United States.

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

Today, 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 among Mexico's elite, never receiving diplomatic appointments, like Carlos Fuentes, and turning down political opportunities nor has she spent much time in the elite literary circles in Mexico.

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 1979, Elena Poniatowska was the first woman to win Mexico's National Journalism Prize for her contributions to the dissemination of Mexican cultural and political expression.

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.