Thinker, writer, diplomat, feminist Rosario Castellanos was emerging as one of Mexico's major literary figures before her untimely death in 1974. This sampler of her work brings together her major poems, short fiction, essays, and a three-act play, The Eternal Feminine. Translated with fidelity to language and cultural nuance, many of these works appear here in English for the first time, allowing English-speaking readers to see the depth and range of Castellanos' work.

In her introductory essay, "Reading Rosario Castellanos: Contexts, Voices, and Signs," Maureen Ahern presents the first comprehensive study of Castellanos' work as a sign or signifying system. This approach through contemporary semiotic theory unites literary criticism and translation as an integral semiotic process. Ahern reveals how Castellanos integrated women's images, bodies, voices, and texts to feminize her discourse and create a plurality of new signs/messages about women in Mexico. Describing this process in The Eternal Feminine, Castellanos observes, "...it's not good enough to imitate the models proposed for us that are answers to circumstances other than our own. It isn't even enough to discover who we are. We have to invent ourselves."

Maureen Ahern, co-editor of Homenaje a Rosario Castellanos and a noted translator, is a professor of Spanish at the Ohio State University.

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Reading Rosario Castellanos: Contexts, Voices, and Signs
  • Contexts
  • Poetry: Silences and Otherness
  • Speakers and Addressees in the Poetry of Rosario Castellanos
  • The Appropriation of Signs: Intertexts and Subtexts
  • Fiction: Under a Man’s Hand
  • Essays: Writing Her Self
  • The Eternal Feminine: Destroying the Myths
  • Notes
  • Works Cited
• Rosario Castellanos: A Basic Bibliography of Her Writing
• A Select Bibliography of Rosario Castellanos Criticism
• Poetry, translated by Maureen Ahern
  • Silence Near an Ancient Stone
  • To a Tiny Mayan Badger
  • The Other
  • Monologue of a Foreign Woman
  • Routine
  • Presence
  • Passage
  • Consciousness
  • Metamorphosis of the Sorceress
  • Chess
  • Brief Chronicle
  • Malinche
  • Memorandum on Tlatelolco
  • Self-Portrait
  • Speaking of Gabriel
  • Home Economics
  • Learning about Things
  • Postscript
  • You Are Not Poetry
  • Re: Mutilations
  • Meditation on the Brink
  • Kinsey Report
  • Looking at the Mona Lisa
  • Nobodying
  • Nazareth
• Short Fiction
  • The Eagle, translated by Laura Carp Solomon
  • Three Knots in the Net, translated by Laura Carp Solomon
  • Fleeting Friendships, translated by Lesley Salas
  • The Widower Román, translated by Ruth Peacock
  • Cooking Lesson, translated by Maureen Ahern
• Essays
  • Incident at Yalentay, translated by Maureen Ahern
  • Once Again Sor Juana, translated by Maureen Ahern
  • An Attempt at Self-Criticism, translated by Laura Carp Solomon
  • Discrimination in the United States and in Chiapas, translated by Maureen Ahern
  • A Man of Destiny, translated by Maureen Ahern
  • Woman and Her Image, translated by Maureen Ahern
  • The Nineteenth-Century Mexican Woman, translated by Maureen Ahern
  • Language as an Instrument of Domination, translated by Maureen Ahern
  • If Not Poetry, Then What?Translated by Maureen Ahern
  • Self-Sacrifice Is a Mad Virtue, translated by Laura Carp Solomon
  • The Liberation of Love, translated by Laura Carp Solomon
  • Herlinda Leaves, translated by Maureen Ahern
• Theater
  • The Eternal Feminine, translated by Diane E. Marting and Betty Tyree Osiek
• Notes
• Notes on the Editor and the Translators
• Index
• Permissions