SOURCE: Winkler, Julie A. “Insiders, Outsiders, and the Slippery Center: Marginality in Los recuerdos del porvenir.” Indiana Journal of Hispanic Literatures, no. 8 (spring 1996): 177-95.

In the following essay, Winkler examines the concepts of marginality and centrality in Los recuerdos del porvenir.

Los recuerdos del porvenir, the novel many consider Elena Garro's best achievement, has furnished material for a wide array of critical approaches as well as a wide variety of readings. Winner of the prestigious Villaurrutia prize in 1963, Los recuerdos del porvenir has since provided its author with no small measure of respect in the literary field, both within Mexico and beyond. Indeed, evidence abounds to show that the novel is rapidly taking its place in the literary canon of the twentieth-century Mexican novel. While readers have not always known what to make of a town as narrator/character, nor have they always been able to agree on...