SOURCE: An interview in Belles Lettres, Vol. 7, No. 2, Winter, 1991–1992, pp. 41–4.

In the following interview conducted in May 1991, Conde and Poniatowska discuss the female protagonists in Poniatowska's stories.

Mexican writer Elena Poniatowska was a visiting lecturer at the University of California at Santa Cruz campus last May when she spoke with Susana Conde.

Elena Poniatowska was born in Paris in 1933, to a Mexican mother and a French father of Polish origin. During the Second World War, her father was a soldier and her mother drove ambulances. At eight, Elena and her family emigrated to Mexico. Because she then spoke only French, her first acquaintance with Spanish came through servants in her household. That first connection with poor or marginalized people influenced her writing deeply. In La ‘Flor de Lis,’ a highly autobiographical novel, Poniatowska presents an account of the contrast between the imported French Enlightenment culture in Mexico and...