Elena Garro

Elena Delfina Garro Navarro (December 11, 1916 – August 22, 1998) was a Mexican author, playwright, screenwriter, journalist, short story writer, and novelist. She has been described as one of the pioneers and an early leading figure of the Magical Realism movement, though she rejected this affiliation. Alongside the works of Juan Rulfo, her first three works: Un hogar sólido (1958), Los recuerdos del porvenir (1963), and La semana de colores (1964), are considered to be among the earliest examples of Magical Realism in Latin American literature. Garro's writing, despite being mostly theatre and fictional prose, borrowed heavily from poetry and its literary elements. Author and biographer Patricia Rosas Lopategui has described Garro's style as "an attempt to rescue the use of everyday language in the form of poetry". Her style has also been compared to that of French writers like Georges Schéhadé, Jean Genet, as well as Romanian-French playwright Eugène Ionesco, due to the surreal nature of her stories. A close friend of Albert Camus, her works were also heavily influenced by his style and philosophy. She was the recipient of the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize in 1996. Her tumultuous marriage with writer Octavio Paz, winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize in Literature, has been the subject of much scrutiny. Garro herself would describe the relationship as "filled with forbiddance, resentments, and rancour for not making each other happy". Despite the hostilities, they are considered among the most talented couple of writers to emerge during the Latin American literary boom of the twentieth century. Garro is seen as one of the unsung figures of the boom; her legacy was influenced, in part, by her rejection of magical realism, as she considered the term "a cheap marketing label". Contemporary historians and literary biographers consider her work as...