Massacre in Mexico, Elena Poniatowska

I neglected to post about this back in June, what with the chaos of summer starting and travel, etc, but it’s incredible. Hardly a light read, being a chronicle of a government massacre of innocent civilians, but it is nonetheless both riveting and grimly beautiful. I had the added benefit of getting to watch a recording of a lecture that Jan Mieszkowski gave about the form of the text (because I was reading the book as part of a book club for Reed College alumni, which includes some of the lectures from the first-year humanities course) and honestly, I wish it could be an Afterword to every copy, because it really blew my mind. A nice reminder of the magic of a college classroom. It also really made me want to reread Svetlana Alexievich, who likewise creates these incredible historical narratives out of fragments of testimony. But as Jan points out, part of the fascination of Poniatowska’s book is that it also has various other kinds of components — photographs, a brief Intro, a middle section that tells you what happened. It’s fascinating.