In the novel Here's to You Jesusa!, Elena Poniatowska's character Jesusa Palancares is shown to have lived in a time when the dominant ideology in Mexico included the notion that all women belonged primarily and even exclusively to the familial or private sphere. The worth of Latin American women at this time was therefore invested in their ability to be good mothers, wives and caretakers. In these traditional roles women were expected to sacrifice their own needs and desires to those of their children, extended family and most particularly their husbands. Women as a result morphed into relational `creatures,' meaning that the familial interactions that they had completely constituted their identity. At the time in which Jesusa's story unravels, an alternative place for women in Mexican society was beginning to emerge; this was that of the soldadera. Soldaderas were women who were responsible for tending to the...