Katherine Anne Porter and Mexico : the illusion of Eden

Resource Information

The work Katherine Anne Porter and Mexico : the illusion of Eden represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in San Francisco Public Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Katherine Anne Porter and Mexico : the illusion of Eden

Title remainder

the illusion of Eden

Creator

• Walsh, Thomas F., (Thomas Francis), 1925-1991

Contributor

• hoopla digital

Subject

• Americans -- Mexico -- History -- 20th century
• Authors, American -- 20th century -- Biography
• Electronic books
• Mexico -- Description and travel
• Mexico -- In literature
• American fiction -- Mexican influences
• Porter, Katherine Anne, 1890-1980 -- Knowledge and learning
• Porter, Katherine Anne, 1890-1980 -- Travel -- Mexico
• Women and literature -- Mexico -- History -- 20th century
• Porter, Katherine Anne, 1890-1980 -- Knowledge -- Mexico

Genre

• Biography

Language

eng

Summary

In 1920, an unknown journalist named Katherine Anne Porter first sojourned in Mexico. When she left her "familiar country" for the last time in 1931, she was the celebrated author of Flowering Judas and Other Stories and had accumulated a wealth of experiences and impressions that would inspire numerous short stories, essays, and reviews, as well as the opening section of her only novel, Ship of Fools. In this perceptive study of Porter's Mexican experiences, Thomas Walsh traces the important connections between those events and her literary works. Separating fact from the fictions that Porter constantly created about her life, he follows the active role that she played in Mexican political and intellectual life-even to the discovery of a plot to overthrow the Mexican government, which eventually figured in Flowering Judas. Most important, Walsh discerns how the great swings between depression and elation that characterized Porter's emotional life influenced her alternating visions of Mexico. In such works as "Xochimilco," Porter saw Mexico as an earthly Eden where hopes for a better society could be realized, but in other stories, including "The Fiesta of Guadalupe," she depicts Mexico as a place of hopeless oppression for the native peoples. Mexico, Porter once said, gave her back her Texas past. Given the unhappiness of that past, her feelings toward Mexico would always be ambivalent, but her Mexican experiences influenced all her subsequent works to some degree, even those pieces not specifically Mexican in setting. Walsh's study, then, is an essential key for anyone seeking greater understanding of the life or works of Katherine Anne Porter

Cataloging source

Midwest

Dewey number

813/.52

Index

no index present

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

dictionaries

Target audience

adult