Zach Kautzman Elena Poniatowska is the professional name of author, journalist, and activist Hélène Elizabeth Louise Amélie Paula Dolores Poniatowska. Poniatowska has spent her career writing and advocating for disenfranchised communities and is considered Mexico’s Grande dame of letters. Poniatowska was born in France in 1932. Her father was a distant relation to the last king of the Poland-Lithuanian crown, and her mother was a French-born heiress whose family left Mexico during the Mexican revolution. Poniatowska was born into comfort and luxury, but she did not allow this to blind her to the tragedies of the world. During the outbreak of World War 2 Poniatowska’s family first travelled to southern France, but eventually fled to Mexico once the entirety of France fell. While in Mexico, Poniatowska continued her education, but stopped short of going to university. She instead became a journalist for the Excelsior newspaper in Mexico City in 1953 at 21. Initially, she started writing as a social columnist and interviewed celebrities and notables, but eventually was promoted to writing literary profiles and articles on social issues. Most notable are her “Testimonial Narratives”. These are accounts from individuals who are often overlooked, or completely ignored from larger public narratives. She would go interview individuals who were forgotten and dismissed by larger media outlets, and she provided them a platform to voice their concerns. Poniatowska’s work is a marriage of fiction and historical reconstruction. She blends the two genres together to provide a faithful representation of a specific community’s plights. Her first major work, in 1971, to deploy this method was the Massacre in Mexico. This book represented the brutal murders of a student protest in 1968 by the Mexican government. The book contains a collection of Poniatowska’s interviews with victims, her own recollection of the night, and poems written by Octavio Paz and Rosario Castellanos. Her other works employ a similar method. She blends multiple forms of media along with first-hand accounts to provide a ground narrative that she can expand upon. As her work implies, Poniatowska is an ardent advocate for human rights. She spends her career teaching, engaging, and representing at-risk and neglected communities. While she is the Grande dame of letters, she is still not fully considered to be a part of the Mexican literary elite. Author Carlos Fuentes jokingly referred to Poniatowska as too busy in the slums to have any time for that.