Rosario Castellanos was one of the most prolific Mexican authors of the twentieth century. She explored themes of gender oppression, the cultural role of women, and was critical on how gender roles operate within Mexican society. She left a resonating legacy with Mexican feminist movements and cultural studies. Castellanos was born to a wealthy landowning family who lived just outside of Mexico City in Comitan. As a young girl she saw how her family treated the indigenous Maya servants at her home and wanted to help them. Her desire to help indigenous groups, and her dissatisfaction with her family, would prove to be strong recurring themes throughout her life. Later she was struck by two events that would define her childhood. The first was when a fortune teller predicted to her mother that one of her children would suddenly die. Her mother pleaded that the boy should live and not the girl. Hurt by this, Rosario felt even more disconnected with her parents. The second event was the death of her parents. In the 1930s the president of Mexico enacted a land reform that took away much of the Castellanos’s land. The family moved to Mexico City and shortly after both parents died. Rosario, left alone as a teenager, soon joined a group of intellectuals in the city. With them she studied philosophy, poetry, literature, and soon started to study at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Here she pursued a career in the arts where she wrote puppet shows meant to promote literacy in impoverished regions and she wrote a column in the newspaper Excelsior. As her career continued Rosario married a fellow professor and had a son, but the marriage soon fell apart. While her personal life was marred by difficulty, she dedicated much of her energy to promoting women’s rights in Mexico. Her fight for women’s rights led her to taking an active role in government which she was rewarded for. Rosario was repeatedly honored in her work and writing, and eventually became an ambassador to Israel in 1971. Rosario’s literary work’s overarching theme is communication. She sought to understand and promote communication for indigenous groups and ladinos, and between men and women in relationships. In her work The Book of Lamentations, she provides a voice for indigenous communities. The work provides a glimpse into their plight, and how they want a better life for themselves. Her work Cartas a Ricardo is a posthumously published collection of letters between her and her ex-husband. The collection is meant to showcase the differences between men and women and how communication can bridge the divide between them. Rosario Castellanos’s body of literature has played a significant role in developing modern Mexican feminist and gender studies. Her writings on gender communication, roles, and indigenous communities are still studied today. She has received multiple awards, honors, and publications through her short life and after. She continues to be an inspiring literary figure even today.