The Seamstresses
Elena Poniatowska
translated from the Spanish
by Rowena Galavitz
unpaginated, paper, staple-bound.
Toad Press/Veliz Books, 2022. $6.00
Cover photograph, by Alejandro González Castillo, shows a mural in downtown Mexico City painted by Maldita Carmen.
Elena Poniatowska has lived most of her life in Mexico City, where she works as a writer and journalist. Writing in a variety of literary genres, Poniatowska has composed over 40 works documenting the history of women and the oppressed. Her most recognized novels include La noche de Tlateloloco, Nada, nadie: las voces del temblor, and Tinísima, all of which have been translated into English. Nada, nadie gives an account, in what has been called “testimonial polyphony,” of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake. She has won numerous literary prizes, including the prestigious Cervantes Award, and she has received honorary doctoral degrees from over a dozen universities, among them, the New School for Social Research.
A former resident of Mexico City, Rowena Galavitz has translated Latin American art criticism, short stories, and poems, including the work of Pura López Colomé, Jair Cortés, Araceli Mancilla, and Víctor Vásquez Quintas. In 2018 she won runner-up for the World Literature Today Translation Prize for her translation of Paula Ilabaca Núñez’s La ciudad lucía. She is currently studying for a certificate in literary translation and a dual master’s degree in religious studies at Indiana University Bloomington. In her graduate studies, Galavitz focuses on Spanish-speaking convent writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Rowena is presently translating an award-winning novel by a contemporary Mexican writer.
