Dancing on the Sun Stone: Mexican Women and the Gendered Politics of Octavio Paz [Paperback]

Dancing on the Sun Stoneis a uniquely transdisciplinary work that fuses modern Latin American history and literature to explore women's lives and gendered politics in Mexico.Marjorie Beckeris a professor of history and English at the University of Southern California. She is also the author ofBody Bach;Setting the Virgin on Fire: Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán Peasants, and the Redemption of the Mexican Revolution;Piano Glass / Glass Piano; andThe Macon Sex School: Songs of Tenderness and Resistance.Concise and beautifully crafted,Dancing on the Sun Stoneprovides a fresh and timely appreciation of the gendered dynamics of modern Mexican life. Imaginatively straddling literary genres and academic disciplines, Becker's volume deserves a place in both scholarly libraries and the undergraduate classroom.--Gilbert M. Joseph, coeditor ofThe Mexico Reader: History, Culture, PoliticsAt the heart ofDancing on the Sun Stoneis a daring and subversive juxtaposition. Becker sets several heretofore little-known Mexican women dancing in a church one evening in 1937 alongside one well-known literary giant, Octavio Paz. Through the eyes and experience of the women, we see Paz's poetics and politics anew. The result is a luminous hybrid of history, memoir, literary analysis, gender studies, and penetrating political critique, written in a poet's lyrical prose.--James Goodman, author ofBut Where Is the Lamb? Imagining the Story of Abraham and IsaacAt the heart ofDancing on the Sun Stoneis a daring and subversive juxtaposition. Becker sets several heretofore little-known Mexican women dancing in a church one evening in 1937 alongside one well-known literary giant, Octavio Paz. Through the eyes and experience of the women, we see Paz's poetics and politics anew. The result is a luminous hybrid of history, memoir, literary analysis, gender studies, and penetrating political critique, written in a poetlÃ'