Melissa Strong Carrillo, UCLA
“Learning from the Poor: Defining the ‘Modern’ Woman in Elena Poniatowska’s ‘Se necesita muchacha’ and ‘Juchitán de las mujeres’”

Paper examines how Mexican author Elena Poniatowska’s portrayal of Juchitán, an indigenous world upside-down, serves to express alternatives to values and practices of “modern” Mexican society under globalization considered in “Se necesita muchacha” (essay on indigenous servants and middle-class female employers). In contrasting these worlds, Poniatowska engages in postmodernist effort to demonstrate inadequacy of “modernity” as measuring-stick of society’s well-being.