SOURCE: “Elena Poniatowska: Search for the Voiceless,” in A Dream of Light and Shadow: Portraits of Latin American Women Writers, edited by Marjorie Agosín, University of New Mexico Press, 1995, pp. 237–51.

In the following essay, García states that Poniatowska's writing demonstrates her love for Mexico and all Mexicans.

I write in order to belong. Elena Poniatowska belongs to Mexico, to women, to the poor, to the oppressed, to the people of the world.¹ She belongs to the cooks, the seamstresses, the students, the servants: people she immortalized in her books on the massacre of student demonstrators in 1968 and the earthquake that hit Mexico City in 1985.

I absorbed Mexico through the maids, following them around as they made the beds and mopped the floors, listening to their chatter as they prepared the hot tortillas. Elena's mother was the daughter of a Mexican landowner who lost his hacienda in...