The Queen of Swords: Jazmina Barrera and Megan McDowell on Elena Garro

About The Queen of Swords:

In what was at first meant to be a short essay about the influential Mexican writer Elena Garro (1916-1988), Jazmina Barrera’s deep curiosity and exploration give us a singular portrait of a complex life. Sifting through the writer’s archives at Princeton, Barrera is repeatedly thwarted in her attempt to fully know her subject. Traditional means of research—the correspondence, photos, and books—serve only to complicate and cloud the woman and her work. Who was Elena Garro, really? She was a writer, a founder of “magical realism”, a dancer. A devotee to the tarot and the I Ching. A socialite and activist on behalf of indigenous Mexicans. She was a mother and a lover who repeatedly shook off (and cheated on) her manipulative husband, Nobel-laureate Octavio Paz. And above all, she wrote with simmering anger and glittering imagination. The Queen of Swords is a portrait of a…