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Gabriel García Márquez

ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE

Translated from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa

Contents

One Hundred Years of Solitude

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gabriel García Márquez was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1927. He studied at the University of Bogotá and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas and New York. He is the author of several novels and collections of stories, including Eyes of a Blue Dog (1947), Leaf Storm (1955), No One Writes to the Colonel (1958), In Evil Hour (1962), Big Mama's Funeral (1962), One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), Innocent Eréndira and Other Stories (1972), The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975), Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981), Love in the Time of Cholera (1985), The General in His Labyrinth (1989), Strange Pilgrims (1992), Of Love and Other Demons (1994) and Memories of My Melancholy Whores (2005). Many of his books are published by Penguin. Gabriel García Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. He lives in Mexico City.

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PENGUIN BOOKS

ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE

'The greatest novel in any language of the last 50 years' Salman Rushdie

'The most important writer of fiction in any language' Bill Clinton

'Should be required reading for the entire human race' New York Times

'No lover of fiction can fail to respond to the grace of Márquez's writing' Sunday Telegraph

'It's so much fun to read, unexpected and beautiful' Darryl Hannah

'The book that sort of saved my life' Emma Thompson

'It's the most magical book I have ever read. I think Márquez has influenced the world' Carolina Herrera

'A masterpiece and one of the undeniable classics of the century' The Times Educational Supplement

'A tour de force. Enchanting' The Times Literary Supplement

'Enormously, kaleidoscopically, mysteriously alive' Guardian

'Fantastic, amiable and ironic. Splendid' New Statesman

'Dazzling' New York Times

'Every word and incident counts, everything hangs together, the work is a neatly perfect organism' Financial Times

MANY YEARS LATER, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. At that time Macondo was a village of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs. The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point. Every year during the month of March a family of ragged gypsies would set up their tents near the village, and with a great uproar of pipes and kettledrums they would display new inventions. First they brought the magnet. A heavy gypsy with an untamed beard and sparrow hands, who introduced himself as Melquíades, put on a bold public demonstration of what he himself called the eighth wonder of the learned alchemists of Macedonia. He went from house to house dragging two metal ingots and everybody was amazed to see pots, pans, tongs, and braziers tumble down from their places and beams creak from the desperation of nails and screws trying to emerge, and even objects that had been lost for a long time appeared from where they had been searched for most and went dragging along in turbulent confusion behind Melquíades' magical irons. "Things have a life of their own," the gypsy proclaimed with a harsh accent. "It's simply a matter of waking up their souls." José Arcadio Buendía, whose unbridled imagination always went beyond the genius of nature and even beyond miracles and magic, thought that it would be possible to make use of that useless invention to extract gold from the bowels of the earth. Melquíades, who was an honest man, warned him: "It won't work for that." But José Arcadio Buendía at that time did not believe in the honesty of gypsies, so he traded his mule and a pair of goats for the two magnetized ingots. Úrsula Iguarán, his wife, who relied on those animals to increase their poor domestic holdings, was unable to dissuade him. "Very soon we'll have gold enough and more to pave the floors of the house," her husband replied. For several months he worked hard to demonstrate the truth of his idea. He explored every inch of the region, even the riverbed, dragging the two iron ingots along and reciting Melquíades' incantation aloud. The only thing he succeeded in doing was to unearth a suit of fifteenth-century armor which had all of its pieces soldered together with rust and inside of which there was the hollow resonance of an enormous stone-filled gourd. When José Arcadio Buendía and the four men of his expedition managed to take the armor apart, they found inside a calcified skeleton with a copper locket containing a woman's hair around its neck.

In March the gypsies returned. This time they brought a telescope and a magnifying glass the size of a drum, which they exhibited as the latest discovery of the Jews of Amsterdam. They placed a gypsy woman at one end of the village and set up the telescope at the entrance to the tent. For the price of five reales, people could look into the telescope and see the gypsy woman an arm's length away. "Science has eliminated distance," Melquíades proclaimed. "In a short time, man will be able to see what is happening in any place in the world without leaving his own house." A burning noonday sun brought out a startling demonstration with the gigantic magnifying glass: they put a pile of dry hay in the middle of the street and set it on fire by concentrating the sun's rays. José Arcadio Buendía, who had still not been consoled for the failure of his magnets, conceived the idea of using that invention as a weapon of war. Again Melquíades tried to dissuade him, but he finally accepted the two magnetized ingots and three colonial coins in exchange for the magnifying glass. Úrsula wept in consternation. That money was from a chest of gold coins that her father had put together over an entire life of privation and that she had buried underneath her bed in hopes of a proper occasion to make use of it. José Arcadio Buendía made no attempt to console her, completely absorbed in his tactical experiments with the abnegation of a scientist and even at the risk of his own life. In an attempt to show the effects of the glass on enemy troops, he exposed himself to the concentration of the sun's rays and suffered burns which turned into sores that took a long time to heal. Over the protests of his wife, who was alarmed at such a dangerous invention, at one point he was ready to set the house on fire. He would spend hours on end in his room, calculating the strategic possibilities of his novel weapon until he succeeded in putting together a manual of startling instructional clarity and an irresistible power of conviction. He sent it to the government, accompanied by numerous descriptions of his experiments and several pages of explanatory sketches, by a messenger who crossed the mountains, got lost in measureless swamps, forded stormy rivers, and was on the point of perishing under the lash of despair, plague, and wild beasts until he found a route that joined the one used by the mules that carried the mail. In spite of the fact that a trip to the capital was little less than impossible at that time, José Arcadio Buendía promised to undertake it as soon as the government ordered him to so that he could put on some practical demonstrations of his invention for the military authorities and could train them himself in the complicated art of solar war. For several years he waited for an answer. Finally, tired of waiting, he bemoaned to Melquíades the failure of his project and the gypsy then gave him a convincing proof of his honesty: he gave him back the doubloons in exchange for the magnifying glass, and he left him in addition some Portuguese maps and several instruments o

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Gabriel García Márquez ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE Translated from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa Contents One Hundred Years of Solitude ABOUT THE AUTHOR Gabriel García Márquez was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1927. He studied at the University of Bogotá and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas and New York.

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"With Brutal Crackdown, Iran Is Convulsed by Worst Unrest in 40 Years" NYT Article

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What started as a protest over a surprise increase in gasoline prices turned into widespread demonstrations met with a systematic repression that left at least 180 people dead.

A burned bank after protests against increased fuel prices in Tehran last month. Credit... Nazanin Tabatabaee West Asia News Agency, via Reuters

Iran is experiencing its deadliest political unrest since the Islamic Revolution 40 years ago, with at least 180 people killed - and possibly hundreds more - as angry protests have been smothered in a government crackdown of unbridled force.

It began two weeks ago with an abrupt increase of at least 50 percent in gasoline prices. Within 72 hours, outraged demonstrators in cities large and small were calling for an end to the Islamic Republic's government and the downfall of its leaders.

In many places, security forces responded by opening fire on unarmed protesters, largely unemployed or low-income young men between the ages of 19 and 26, according to witness accounts and videos. In the southwest city of Mahshahr alone, witnesses and medical personnel said, Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps members surrounded, shot and killed 40 to 100 demonstrators - mostly unarmed young men - in a sugar cane field where they had sought refuge.

"The recent use of lethal force against people throughout the country is unprecedented, even for the Islamic Republic and its record of violence," said Omid Memarian, the deputy director at the Center for Human Rights in Iran, a New York-based group.

Altogether, from 180 to 450 people, and possibly more, were killed in four days of intense violence after the gasoline price increase was announced on Nov. 15, with at least 2,000 wounded and 7,000 detained, according to international rights organizations, opposition groups and local journalists.

The last enormous wave of protests in Iran - in 2009 after a contested election, which was also met with a deadly crackdown - left 72 people dead over a much longer period of about 10 months.

Only now, nearly two weeks after the protests were crushed - and largely obscured by an internet blackout in the country that was lifted recently - have details corroborating the scope of killings and destruction started to dribble out.

The latest outbursts not only revealed staggering levels of frustration with Iran's leaders, but also underscored the serious economic and political challenges facing them, from the Trump administration's onerous sanctions on the country to the growing resentment toward Iran by neighbors in an increasingly unstable Middle East.

The gas price increase, which was announced as most Iranians had gone to bed, came as Iran is struggling to fill a yawning budget gap. The Trump administration sanctions, mostly notably their tight restrictions on exports of Iran's oil, are a big reason for the shortfall. The sanctions are meant to pressure Iran into renegotiating the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and major world powers, which President Trump abandoned, calling it too weak.

Most of the nationwide unrest seemed concentrated in neighborhoods and cities populated by low-income and working-class families, suggesting this was an uprising born in the historically loyal power base of Iran's post-revolutionary hierarchy.

Many Iranians, stupefied and embittered, have directed their hostility directly at the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who called the crackdown a justified response to a plot by Iran's enemies at home and abroad.

The killings prompted a provocative warning from Mir Hussein Moussavi, an opposition leader and former presidential candidate whose 2009 election loss set off peaceful demonstrations that Ayatollah Khamenei also suppressed by force.

In a statement posted Saturday on an opposition website, Mr. Moussavi, who has been under house arrest since 2011 and seldom speaks publicly, blamed the supreme leader for the killings. He compared them to an infamous 1978 massacre by government forces that led to the downfall of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi a year later, at the hands of the Islamic revolutionaries who now rule the country.

"The killers of the year 1978 were the representatives of a nonreligious regime and the agents and shooters of November 2019 are the representatives of a religious government," he said. "Then the commander in chief was the shah and today, here, the supreme leader with absolute authority."

The authorities have declined to specify casualties and arrests and have denounced unofficial figures on the national death toll as speculative. But the nation's interior minister, Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli, has cited widespread unrest around the country.

On state media, he said that protests had erupted in 29 out of 31 provinces and 50 military bases had been attacked, which if true suggested a level of coordination absent in the earlier protests. The property damage also included 731 banks, 140 public spaces, nine religious centers, 70 gasoline stations, 307 vehicles, 183 police cars, 1,076 motorcycles and 34 ambulances, the interior minister said.

The worst violence documented so far happened in the city of Mahshahr and its suburbs, with a population of 120,000 people in Iran's southwest Khuzestan Province - a region with an ethnic Arab majority that has a long history of unrest and opposition to the central government. Mahshahr is adjacent to the nation's largest industrial petrochemical complex and serves as a gateway to Bandar Imam, a major port.

The New York Times interviewed six residents of the city, including a protest leader who had witnessed the violence; a reporter based in the city who works for Iranian media, and had investigated the violence but was banned from reporting it; and a nurse at the hospital where casualties were treated.

They each provided similar accounts of how the Revolutionary Guards deployed a large force to Mahshahr on Monday, Nov. 18, to crush the protests. All spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution by the Guards.

For three days, according to these residents, protesters had successfully gained control of most of Mahshahr and its suburbs, blocking the main road to the city and the adjacent industrial petrochemical complex. Iran's interior minister confirmed that the protesters had gotten control over Mahshahr and its roads in a televised interview last week, but the Iranian government did not respond to specific questions in recent days about the mass killings in the city.

Local security forces and riot police officers had attempted to disperse the crowd and open the roads, but failed, residents said. Several clashes between protesters and security forces erupted between Saturday evening and Monday morning before the Guards were dispatched there.

When the Guards arrived near the entrance to a suburb, Shahrak Chamran, populated by low-income ethnic Arabs, they immediately shot without warning at dozens of men blocking the intersection, killing several on the spot, according to the residents interviewed by phone.

The residents said the other protesters scrambled to a nearby sugar cane field, and that one of them, apparently armed with an AK-47, fired back. The Guards immediately encircled the men and responded with machine gun fire, killing as many as 100 people, the residents said.

The Guards piled the dead onto the back of a truck and departed, the residents said, and relatives of the wounded then transported them to Memko Hospital.

One of the residents, a 24-year-old unemployed college graduate in chemistry who had helped organize the protests blocking the roads, said he had been less than a mile away from the mass shooting and that his best friend, also 24, and a 32-year-old cousin were among the dead.

He said they both had been shot in the chest and their bodies were returned to the families five days later, only after they had signed paperwork promising not to hold funerals or memorial services and not to give interviews to media.

The young protest organizer said he, too, was shot in the ribs on Nov. 19, the day after the mass shooting, when the Guards stormed with tanks into his neighborhood, Shahrak Taleghani, among the poorest suburbs of Mahshahr.

He said a gun battle erupted for hours between the Guards and ethnic Arab residents, who traditionally keep guns for hunting at home. Iranian state media and witnesses reported that a senior Guards commander had been killed in a Mahshahr clash. Video on Twitter suggests tanks had been deployed there.

A 32-year-old nurse in Mahshahr reached by the phone said she had tended to the wounded at the hospital and that most had sustained gunshot wounds to the head and chest.

She described chaotic scenes at the hospital, with families rushing to bring in the casualties, including a 21 year old who was to be married but could not be saved. "'Give me back my son!,'" the nurse quoted his sobbing mother as saying. "'It's his wedding in two weeks!'"

The nurse said security forces stationed at the hospital arrested some of the wounded protesters after their conditions had stabilized. She said some relatives, fearing arrest themselves, dropped wounded love ones at the hospital and fled, covering their faces.

On Nov. 25, a week after it happened, the city's representative in Parliament, Mohamad Golmordai, vented outrage in a blunt moment of searing antigovernment criticism that was broadcast on Iranian state television and captured in photos and videos uploaded to the internet.

"What have you done that the undignified Shah did not do?" Mr. Golmordai screamed from the Parliament floor, as a scuffle broke out between him and other lawmakers, including one who grabbed him by the throat.

The local reporter in Mahshahr said the total number of people killed in three days of unrest in the area had reached 130, including those killed in the field.

"This regime has pushed people toward violence," said Yousef Alsarkhi, 29, a political activist from Khuzestan who migrated to the Netherlands four years ago. "The more they repress, the more aggressive and angry people get."

Political analysts said the protests appeared to have delivered a severe blow to President Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate in Iran's political spectrum, all but guaranteeing that hard-liners would win upcoming parliamentary elections and the presidency in two years.

The tough response to the protests also appeared to signal a hardening rift between Iran's leaders and sizable segments of the population of 83 million.

"The government's response was uncompromising, brutal and rapid," said Henry Rome, an Iran analyst at the Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy in Washington. Still, he said, the protests also had "demonstrated that many Iranians are not afraid to take to the streets."

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With Brutal Crackdown, Iran Convulsed by Worst Unrest in 40 Years

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What started as a protest over a surprise increase in gasoline prices turned into widespread demonstrations met with a systematic repression that left at least 180 people dead. Iran is experiencing its deadliest political unrest since the Islamic Revolution 40 years ago, with at least 180 people killed - and possibly hundreds more - as angry protests have been smothered in a government crackdown of unbridled force.

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"What Iran Did Not Want You to See" NYT Opinion Article

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"What Iran Did Not Want You to See" NYT Opinion Article

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transcript

What Iran Did Not Want You To See

In the wake of an internet shutdown, one human rights researcher sifts through video evidence of atrocities.

It's really shocking. You see the security forces who are just shooting. The protests were triggered by a massive rise in the fuel price. And within hours of the protests starting, the authorities resorted to the use of firearms to crush down these voices. The Iranian authorities shut down the internet. It happened extremely quickly. Between 24 hours people were no longer online and seeing our messages. However, many people courageously sent these videos. And as the internet has been restored slowly Amnesty International has been able to look in to dozens of videos that have emerged. The Iranian authorities have a history of using excessive force against peaceful protesters. What we've seen this time though is an unprecedented use of lethal force against unarmed protesters. Now I can show you some of the footage that the Iranian authorities clearly did not want the world to see. This is a video from Tehran that emerged on 17th November onwards. It is this moment, especially that shows security forces shooting directly at the people at the end of the street. This is what shows us that the authorities have been unlawfully using firearms against unarmed protesters. This sign on the building indicates that this building belongs to the Department of Justice. The people on the rooftop who are shooting into crowds of people are wearing uniforms which indicates that they are from security forces. Based on our research, the majority of the deaths have resulted almost entirely from the use of firearms. If I pause here, you can see a man who holds a gun and is shooting at the protesters he's not wearing a uniform and people who are not familiar may mistakenly think that he's a protester. But he is a plain clothes official. And you can gather this information because as you can see, all the security forces are standing on this side of the street. So in general, it doesn't seem that the authorities want to hide the identities of these people. And that adds an additional layer of illegality to the situation. This is the footage from the city of Shiraz in Fars Province. You clearly hear people chanting slogans against the current supreme leader. While the protests were triggered by the sudden rise in fuel prices, they have expanded to include grievances against political repression and political authoritarianism. Many protesters have certainly suffered from injuries caused by beatings. People who have been injured are not going to the hospitals because they are afraid that they will be arrested by the authorities. There is at least one report that the intelligence authorities have forced the management of a hospital to submit to them the list of newly admitted patients. There are also some horrific reports that we are still investigating that the authorities are forcing the families to pay in order to receive the bodies of their loved one. In some cases, families have been told that they need to pay for the price of the bullet that was used to kill their loved one. If these reports are true, this is an additional layer of cruelty against families who've already suffered unspeakably. On 20th November the forced confessions of one woman who had been reportedly arrested was aired on state T.V. We can expect that in the coming days or weeks there will be a wave of televised confessions that have been extracted under torture and other ill treatment. This pattern of unlawful killing will continue unless the Iranian authorities are held to account. And for that to happen, it's essential that international experts from the U.N. are allowed to enter their country, interview the families of those killed, visit detention centers and hospitals and cemeteries and build a fair picture of the horrific events that took place in the country.

In the wake of an internet shutdown, one human rights researcher sifts through video evidence of atrocities. Credit Credit... The New York Times

Parts of Iran are back online, and videos suppressed by the nation's internet shutdown are starting to trickle onto social media. In the Video Op-Ed above, Raha Bahreini sheds light on the eye-opening stories that Iran's government did not want you to see.

While internet service has been partly restored, many Iranians still do not have internet access on mobile phones, and government officials there have warned that connectivity may be blocked indefinitely. In a call for evidence of government repression during the blackout, the United States State Department says it has received almost 20,000 messages, videos and photographs.

Ahike in fuel prices sparked protests across Iran. Ms. Bahreini exposes and analyzes footage of human rights abuses by Iranian security forces, including shootings into crowds of unarmed protesters. And she warns of what may come next - incarceration, torture and forced confessions that will further oppress the Iranian people. If the world does not take a stand, Ms. Bahreini fears, Iran's internet blackout may foreshadow the nation's darkest days.

Raha Bahreini (@RahaBahreini) is a human rights lawyer and a researcher on Iran for Amnesty International.

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Opinion | What Iran Did Not Want You to See

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Parts of Iran are back online, and videos suppressed by the nation's internet shutdown are starting to trickle onto social media. In the Video Op-Ed above, Raha Bahreini sheds light on the eye-opening stories that Iran's government did not want you to see.

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Critical Essay-The Awakening as Feminist Criticism

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19th Century Criticism on Chopin's Awakening

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Note: Remember to proofread. Spelling and grammatical errors will result in a reduced grade.

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Sex, Lies, and Conversation By Deborah Tannen

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Sex, Lies, and Conversation By Deborah Tannen

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Sex Lies and Conversation by Deborah Tannen

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The writing during this period was also very regional. The industrial revolution called for standardization, mass production of goods and streamlined channels of distribution. America was leaping into a new modern age and people feared that local folkways and traditions would be soon forgotten.

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American author Kate Chopin (1850-1904) wrote two published novels and about a hundred short stories in the 1890s. Most of her fiction is set in Louisiana and most of her best-known work focuses on the lives of sensitive, intelligent women.
By the Editors of KateChopin.org
Kate Chopin's short stories were well received in her own time and were published by some of America's most prestigious magazines-, the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Young People, Youth's Companion, and the Century. A few stories were syndicated by the American Press Association. Her stories appeared also in her two published collections, Bayou Folk (1894) and A Night in Acadie (1897), both of which received good reviews from critics across the country. Twenty-six of her stories are children's stories -those published in or submitted to children's magazines or those similar in subject or theme to those that were. By the late 1890s Kate Chopin was well known among American readers of magazine fiction.

Her early novel (1890) had not been much noticed by the public, but (1899) was widely condemned. Critics called it morbid, vulgar, and disagreeable. Willa Cather, who would become a well known twentieth-century American author, labeled it trite and sordid.

Some modern scholars have written that the novel was banned at Chopin's hometown library in St. Louis, but this claim has not been able to be verified, although in 1902, the Evanston, Illinois, Public Library removed The Awakening from its open shelves-and the book has been challenged twice in recent years. Chopin's third collection of stories, to have been called A Vocation and a Voice, was for unknown reasons cancelled by the publisher and did not appear as a separate volume until 1991.

Chopin's novels were mostly forgotten after her death in 1904, but several of her short stories appeared in an anthology within five years after her death, others were reprinted over the years, and slowly people again came to read her. In the 1930s a Chopin biography appeared which spoke well of her short fiction but dismissed The Awakening as unfortunate. However, by the 1950s scholars and others recognized that the novel is an insightful and moving work of fiction. Such readers set in motion a Kate Chopin revival, one of the more remarkable literary revivals in the United States.

After 1969, when Per Seyersted's biography, one sympathetic to The Awakening, was published, along with Seyersted's edition of her complete works, Kate Chopin became known throughout the world. She has attracted great attention from scholars and students, and her work has been translated into other languages, including Albanian, Arabic, Catalan, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, Galician, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malayalam, Persian (Farsi), Polish, Portuguese, Serbian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, and Vietnamese. (If you know of a translation into another language, would you write to us?) She is today understood as a classic writer who speaks eloquently to contemporary concerns. The Awakening, "The Storm," "The Story of an Hour," "Désirée's Baby," "A Pair of Silk Stockings," "A Respectable Woman," "Athénaïse," and other stories appear in countless editions and are embraced by people for their sensitive, graceful, poetic depictions of women's lives.

Kate Chopin's childhood
Kate Chopin's marriage; her life in Louisiana
Kate Chopin's writing career; her life in St. Louis
Kate Chopin's death; assessments of her work
Published biographies of Kate Chopin

Kate Chopin's childhood

Catherine (Kate) O'Flaherty was born in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, on February 8, 1850, the second child of Thomas O'Flaherty of County Galway, Ireland, and Eliza Faris of St. Louis. Kate's family on her mother's side was of French extraction, and Kate grew up speaking both French and English. She was bilingual and bicultural-feeling at home in different communities with quite different values-and the influence of French life and literature on her thinking is noticeable throughout her fiction.

From 1855 to 1868 Kate attended the St. Louis Academy of the Sacred Heart, with one year at the Academy of the Visitation. As a girl, she was mentored by woman-by her mother, her grandmother, and her great grandmother, as well as by the Sacred Heart nuns. Kate formed deep bonds with her family members, with the sisters who taught her at school, and with her life-long friend Kitty Garasché. Much of the fiction Kate wrote as an adult draws on the nurturing she received from women as she was growing up.

Her early life had a great deal of trauma. In 1855, her father was killed in a railroad accident. In 1863 her beloved French-speaking great grandmother died. Kate spent the Civil War in St. Louis, a city where residents supported both the Union and the Confederacy and where her family had slaves in the house. Her half brother enlisted in the Confederate army, was captured by Union forces, and died of typhoid fever.

From 1867 to 1870 Kate kept a commonplace book in which she recorded diary entries and copied passages of essays, poems, and other writings. In 1869 she wrote a little sketch, "Emancipation: A Life Fable."

Kate Chopin's marriage; her life in Louisiana

At eighteen, Kate was an "Irish Beauty," her friend Kitty later said, with "a droll gift of mimicry" and a passion for music. At about nineteen, through social events held at Oakland, a wealthy estate near St. Louis, Kate met Oscar Chopin of Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, whose French father had taken the family to Europe during the Civil War. "I am going to be married," Kate confided in her commonplace book, "married to the right man. It does not seem strange as I had thought it would-I feel perfectly calm, perfectly collected. And how surprised everyone was, for I had kept it so secret!" Kate and Oscar were married in 1870.

On their wedding trip the couple traveled to Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and New York, and then crossed the Atlantic and landed in Bremen, Germany. Dr. Heidi M. Podlasli-Labrenz, a Senior Lecturer at the University of Bremen, recently took pictures, she tells us, "of the place that Kate Chopin visited on July 8, 1870: 'Ten miles out in the country' . . . to visit the residence of a Mr Knoop, the wealthiest merchant of Bremen.'" Podlasli-Labrenz says that from the picture she took of Baron Knoop's statue "you will get an idea of the kind of man he was supposed to have been: very polite, generous, and good-natured."

The Chopins toured Germany, Switzerland, and France. They saw Paris only briefly, in September, 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War, at a moment when the city was preparing for a long siege. Kate never visited Europe again.

Back in the States, the couple settled in New Orleans, where Oscar established a business as a cotton factor, dealing with cotton and other commodities (corn, sugar, and molasses, among them). Louisiana was in the midst of Reconstruction at the time, and the city was beset with economic and racial troubles. Oscar joined the notorious White League, a Democratic group that in 1874 had a violent confrontation with Republican Radicals, causing President Grant to send in federal troops.

But New Orleans also offered superb music at the French Opera House, along with fine theatre, horse races, and, of course, Mardi Gras. Kate may have met the French painter Edgar Degas, who lived in New Orleans for several months around 1872. She would have been observing life in the city, gathering material that she could draw upon for her fiction later in life.

The Chopins lived in three New Orleans houses. The last one, pictured here, is at 1413 Louisiana Avenue (The photo by Judy Cooper appears in Thomas Bonner, Jr's Kate Chopin Companion):

Like other wealthy families in the city, the Chopins would go by boat to vacation on Grand Isle, a Creole resort in the Gulf of Mexico.

Between 1871 and 1879 Kate gave birth to five sons and a daughter-in order of birth, Jean Baptiste, Oscar Charles, George Francis, Frederick, Felix Andrew, and Lélia (baptized Marie Laïza).

In 1879 the Chopins moved to Cloutierville, a small French village in Natchitoches Parish, in northwestern Louisiana, after Oscar closed his New Orleans business because of hard financial times. The house, later called the Bayou Folk Museum/Kate Chopin House, burned in 2008. (Photo by Jean Carter, courtesy Cane River National Heritage Area.)

Kate Chopin's writing career; her life in St. Louis

Oscar bought a general store in Cloutierville, but in 1882 he died of malaria-and Kate became a widow at age thirty-two, with the responsibility of raising six children. She never remarried.

In 1883 and 1884, Chopin's recent biographer, Emily Toth, has written, Kate had an affair with a local planter. But she then moved with her family back to St. Louis where she found better schools for her children and a richer cultural life for herself. Shortly after, in 1885, her mother died. Kate Chopin's home was at 4232 McPherson Avenue in St Louis; it is still lived in today.

As a mature adult, Barbara Ewell writes, Kate "was a remarkable, charming person. Not very tall, inclined to be plump, and quite pretty, she had thick, wavy brown hair that grayed prematurely, and direct, sparking brown eyes. Her friends remembered most her quiet manner and quick Irish wit, embellished with a gift for mimicry. A gracious, easygoing hostess, she enjoyed laughter, music, and dancing, but especially intellectual talk, and she could express her own considered opinions with surprising directness."

Dr. Frederick Kolbenheyer, her obstetrician and a family friend, encouraged her to write. Influenced by Guy de Maupassant and other writers, French and American, Kate began to compose fiction, and in 1889 one of her stories appeared in the St. Louis Post Dispatch. In 1890 her first novel, At Fault, was published privately.

The book is about a thirtyish Catholic widow in love with a divorced man. Like Edna Pontellier inThe Awakening, Thérèse Lafirme struggles to reconcile her "outward existence" with her "inward life." She cannot as a practicing Catholic accept the idea of divorce, yet she cannot banish from her life the man whom she loves. At Fault offers a compelling glimpse into what Kate Chopin was thinking about as she began her writing career.

Chopin completed a second novel, to have been called Young Dr. Gosse and Théo, but her attempt to find a publisher failed and she later destroyed the manuscript. She became active in St. Louis literary and cultural circles, discussing the works of many writers, including Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Émile Zola, and George Sand (she had called her daughter Lélia, apparently after the title of Sand's 1833 novel).

During the next decade, although maintaining an active social life, she plunged into her work and kept accurate records of when she wrote her hundred or so short stories, which magazines she submitted them to, when they were accepted (or rejected) and published, and how much she was paid for them.

In 1889 she wrote "A Point at Issue!" and in 1891 rewrote "A No-Account Creole" (which she had originally written in 1888) and wrote the children's story "Beyond the Bayou" and other stories. Five of her stories appeared in regional and national magazines, including Youth's Companion and Harper's Young People.

She wrote "Désirée's Baby" and the little sketch "Ripe Figs" in 1892. "At the 'Cadian Ball" appeared in Two Tales that year, and eight of her other stories were published. The next year she wrote "Madame Célestin's Divorce," and thirteen of her stories were published. Chopin traveled to New York and Boston to seek a publisher for a novel and a collection of stories.

In 1894 she wrote "Lilacs" and "Her Letters." "The Story of an Hour" and "A Respectable Woman" appeared in . And Houghton Mifflin published Bayou Folk, a collection of twenty-three of Chopin's stories.

Bayou Folk was a success. Chopin wrote that she had seen a hundred press notices about it. The collection was written up in the New York Times and the Atlantic, among other places, and most reviewers found its stories pleasant and charming. They liked its use of local dialects.

Chopin traveled that year to a conference of the Western Association of Writers in Indiana and published in Critic an essay about her experience, an essay that offers a rare insight into what she thinks about writers and writing. "Among these people," she says, "are to be found an earnestness in the acquirement and dissemination of book-learning, a clinging to the past and conventional standards, an almost Creolean sensitiveness to criticism and a singular ignorance of, or disregard for, the value of the highest art forms."

"There is," she continues, "a very, very big world lying not wholly in northern Indiana, nor does it lie at the antipodes, either. It is human existence in its subtle, complex, true meaning, stripped of the veil with which ethical and conventional standards have draped it."

Also in 1894 Chopin published in St. Louis Life a review of Lourdes by the French writer Émile Zola. She did not much like the book, but the way she begins her review is illuminating:

"I once heard a devotee of impressionism admit, in looking at a picture by Monet, that, while he himself had never seen in nature the peculiar yellows and reds therein depicted, he was convinced that Monet had painted them because he saw them and because they were true. With something of a kindred faith in the sincerity of Mons. Zola's work, I am yet not at all times ready to admit its truth, which is only equivalent to saying that our points of view differ, that truth rests upon a shifting basis and is apt to be kaleidoscopic."

Her 1894 comment about the importance of describing "human existence in its subtle, complex, true meaning, stripped of the veil with which ethical and conventional standards have draped it" and her conviction that "truth rests upon a shifting basis and is apt to be kaleidoscopic" are helpful points of reference in approaching Kate Chopin's work.

In 1895 Chopin wrote "Athénaïse" and "Fedora," and twelve of her stories were published. In 1896 she wrote "A Pair of Silk Stockings." "Athénaïse" was published in the Atlantic Monthly. In 1897 Way and Williams (of Chicago) published A Night in Acadie, a collection of twenty-one Chopin stories.

Like Bayou Folk, her earlier collection, A Night in Acadie was praised by the critics. One reviewer called it "a string of little jewels," and a modern critic considers it one of America's great nineteenth-century books of short stories.

Chopin's grandmother, Athénaïse Charleville Faris, died in 1897. Chopin worked on that year, finishing the novel in 1898. She also wrote her short story "The Storm" in 1898, but, apparently because of its sexual content, she did not send it out to publishers. Probably no mainstream American publisher would have printed the story.

The next year, 1899, one of her stories appeared in the Saturday Evening Post, and Herbert S. Stone published The Awakening.

A few critics praised the novel's artistry, but most were very negative, calling the book "morbid," "unpleasant," "unhealthy," "sordid," "poison." You can read about the reviewers in the Chopin biographies listed below, in Margo Culley's Norton Critical Edition of the novel, and in Janet Beer's Cambridge Companion to Kate Chopin, among other places. For details, scroll down on page of this site.

It took decades before critics fully grasped what Chopin had accomplished. In 1969 Norwegian critic Per Seyersted finally did her justice. Kate Chopin, he wrote, "broke new ground in American literature. She was the first woman writer in her country to accept passion as a legitimate subject for serious, outspoken fiction. Revolting against tradition and authority; with a daring which we can hardy fathom today; with an uncompromising honesty and no trace of sensationalism, she undertook to give the unsparing truth about woman's submerged life. She was something of a pioneer in the amoral treatment of sexuality, of divorce, and of woman's urge for an existential authenticity. She is in many respects a modern writer, particularly in her awareness of the complexities of truth and the complications of freedom."

Two of Chopin's stories were published in Vogue in 1900. You can find out when Kate Chopin wrote each of her short stories and when and where each was first published.

Herbert S. Stone, for unknown reasons, canceled her contract for A Vocation and a Voice, a third collection of her stories (the collection was published by Penguin Classics in 1991). In 1902 "A Vocation and a Voice," the title story of Chopin's proposed volume, was published in the St. Louis Mirror.

Kate Chopin's death; assessments of her work

In 1904 Kate Chopin bought a season ticket for the famous St. Louis World's Fair, which was located not far from her home. It had been hot in the city all that summer, and Saturday, August 20, was especially hot, so when Chopin returned home from the fair, she was very tired. She called her son at midnight complaining of a pain in her head. Doctors thought that she had had a cerebral hemorrhage.

She lapsed into unconsciousness the next day and died on August 22. She is buried in Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis, where many people visit her gravesite and sometimes leave behind tokens of their affection.

Her last published story appeared in Youth's Companion on March 30, 1905. You can read "Her First Party" as it looked when it appeared.

Fifty years later, critics began to understand the essence of her work. Kenneth Eble published an article about her in 1956, and, in his introduction to a paperback edition of The Awakening in 1964, he speaks of Chopin's "underground imagination"-"the imaginative life which seems to have gone on from early childhood somewhat beneath and apart from her well-regulated actual existence."

George Arms a few years later writes that in her work Kate Chopin "presents a series of events in which the truth is present, but with a philosophical pragmatism she is unwilling to extract a final truth. Rather, she sees truth as constantly re-forming itself and as so much a part of the context of what happens that it can never be final or for that matter abstractly stated."

And in his 1969 biography, Per Seyersted famously described how Chopin "broke new ground in American literature."

Since 1969, countless scholars have written about Chopin's life and work. Feminist critics have had an enormous influence. Most of what has been written about Kate Chopin since 1969 is feminist in nature or is focused on women's positions in society. Sandra Gilbert's introduction to the Penguin Classics Edition of The Awakening, for example, and Margo Culley's selection of essays for the Norton Critical Edition of the novel are familiar to a generation of readers, although scholars have also been dealing with other subjects and themes. Lists of critical works appear at the bottom of those pages on this site devoted to Chopin's two novels and her most popular short stories.

Today Kate Chopin is widely accepted as one of America's essential authors.

Her novels and stories are available in countless books and online. Critics and scholars in many countries have discussed her work in over 400 journal articles as well as in at least 60 books and 160 PhD dissertations. Artists have created plays, films, songs, operas, dances, screenplays, graphic fiction, and other art forms based on her work.

The Central West End Association of the city of St. Louis, Missouri, in 2012 dedicated a bust of Kate Chopin at the Writers' Corner in the city.

Published biographies of Kate Chopin:

The most recent-and today by far the most influential-biography of Kate Chopin is Emily Toth's Unveiling Kate Chopin (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1999). Emily Toth earlier published a longer biography, Kate Chopin (New York: Morrow, 1990).

An important biography is the one referred to above, Per Seyersted's Kate Chopin: A Critical Biography (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969).

Also important is Daniel Rankin's Kate Chopin and Her Creole Stories (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1932; available now through Google Books). In spite of his impaired critical judgment (he considered The Awakening an unfortunate mistake), Rankin had, as Bernard Koloski explains in the recent Cambridge Companion to Kate Chopin, "what no other Chopin scholar would ever have again: access to Kate Chopin's children, relatives, friends, and at least one of her publishers."

Biographical questions and answers:

Q: Does Kate Chopin have any descendants living today?

A: Yes, she has many. You can read about some of them on our page Kate Chopin's Family Today.

Q: I'm reading Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and I've just met Simon Legree. I've read somewhere that Simon Legree was modeled after the father of Oscar Chopin, Kate Chopin's husband. Do you know if this is true or just rumor?

A: Here is what Emily Toth says in her 1990 biography of Kate Chopin: "Local folklore confused [Dr. Chopin, Oscar Chopin's father] with Robert McAlpin, who had owned the land before him and who was sometimes said to be the model for Simon Legree in Uncle Tom's Cabin."

So the connection between Oscar Chopin's father and Simon Legree is rumor, not fact.

You may want to read Chopin's early novel, . It includes a chapter in which two characters visit Robert McAlpin's grave.

Q: Can anyone help with the identity of Mrs. F. M. Estere of 4434 Laclede Avenue of St. Louis and her possible connection with Kate Chopin?

A: We've recently received a response to this question. Many thanks to Ms. Clark:

I am a genealogist and was intrigued by the question. Here is what I was able to find out in just a couple of hours of Internet research.....

I believe the woman is Mrs. F. M. Estes (Francis "Frank" Marion Estes). He was a lawyer who practiced at that address. This was his second wife. They married in 1896 in St. Louis. Her name was Nellie Hancock Stockton (1870-1943) She was born in Texas. They had one son, Stockton. Frank died in 1909. He had many investments so his wife never wanted for money after his death. She actually left the country in 1910 and went to Buenos Aires until about 1912. She moved to New York after that. She left the country again in 1918 and returned in 1921. Her son was traveling with her at this time as he is listed on the ship's manifest. Frank had two children from his first marriage, Francis M. Jr, and Grace.

Kate's house on Morgan Street was several blocks away from the Estes home on Laclede Ave. Her home on McPhearson was much closer. It is possible they were in the same social circles. Frank was a well-known lawyer and was the council on several important St. Louis cases. It is possible he represented Kate at some time.

I hope this information sheds some light on Kate's friends.

Pamela Clark

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Biography, Kate Chopin, The Awakening, The Storm, stories

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By the Editors of KateChopin.org Kate Chopin's short stories were well received in her own time and were published by some of America's most prestigious magazines-, the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Young People, Youth's Companion, and the Century. A few stories were syndicated by the American Press Association.

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It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing. Her husband’s friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard’s name leading the list of “killed.” He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.

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The Awakening Journal

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Paper one Let the Great World Spin passage

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Paper One Sample Texts (Drama and Travelogue) with Examiner's Key Ideas

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Paper One Sample Texts (Drama and Travelogue) with Examiner's Key Ideas

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Student #2 Examiner's Comments (Let the Great World Spin)

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Student #2 Examiner's Comments (Let the Great World Spin)

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Paper 1 Student Sample B Let the Great World Spin

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Student #1 Examiner's Comments (Let the Great World Spin)

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Student #1 Examiner's Comments (Let the Great World Spin)

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Paper 1 Student Sample essay on Let the Great World Spin

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The Awakening, and Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin

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Free kindle book and epub digitized and proofread by Project Gutenberg.

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The danger of a single story

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Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice -- and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.

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Sing Resources

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The official US site of Haruki Murakami. Enter Murakami's world to explore the books, read interviews, discover music, browse image galleries, and much more.

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The Mexican Revolution broke out in 1910 when the decades-old rule of President Porfirio Díaz was challenged by Francisco I. Madero, a reformist writer and politician. When Díaz refused to allow clean elections, Madero's calls for revolution were answered by Emiliano Zapata in the south, and Pascual Orozco and Pancho Villa in the north.

Díaz was deposed in 1911, but the revolution was just beginning. By the time it was over, millions had died as rival politicians and warlords fought each other over the cities and regions of Mexico. By 1920, the chickpea farmer and revolutionary general Alvaro Obregón had risen to the presidency, primarily by outliving his main rivals. Most historians believe this event marks the end of the revolution, although the violence continued well into the 1920s.

The Porfiriato

Porfirio Díaz led Mexico as president from 1876 to 1880 and from 1884 to 1911. He was an acknowledged but unofficial ruler from 1880 to 1884 as well. His time in power is referred to as the "Porfiriato." During those decades, Mexico modernized, building mines, plantations, telegraph lines, and railroads, which brought great wealth to the nation. It came, however, at the cost of repression and grinding debt peonage for the lower classes. Díaz's close circle of friends benefited greatly, and most of Mexico's vast wealth remained in the hands of a few families.

Díaz ruthlessly clung to power for decades, but after the turn of the century, his grip on the nation started to slip. The people were unhappy: An economic recession caused many to lose their jobs and people began calling for change. Díaz promised free elections in 1910.

Díaz and Madero

Díaz expected to win easily and legally and was therefore shocked when it became evident that his opponent, Francisco I. Madero, was likely to win. Madero, a reformist writer who came from a wealthy family, was an unlikely revolutionary. He was short and skinny, with a high-pitched voice that became quite shrill when he was excited. A teetotaler and vegetarian, he claimed to be able to speak to ghosts and spirits, including his dead brother and Benito Juárez. Madero didn't have any real plan for Mexico after Díaz; he simply felt that someone else should rule after decades of Don Porfirio.

Díaz fixed the elections, arresting Madero on false charges of plotting armed insurrection. Madero was bailed out of jail by his father and went to San Antonio, Texas, where he watched Díaz easily "win" re-election. Convinced that there was no other way to get Díaz to step down, Madero called for an armed rebellion; ironically, that was the same charge that had been trumped-up against him. According to Madero's Plan of San Luis Potosi, the insurrection would begin on November 20.

Orozco, Villa, and Zapata

In the southern state of Morelos, Madero's call was answered by peasant leader Emiliano Zapata, who hoped a revolution would lead to land reform. In the north, muleteer Pascual Orozco and bandit chieftain Pancho Villa also took up arms. All three rallied thousands of men to their rebel armies.

In the south, Zapata attacked large ranches called haciendas, giving back land that had been illegally and systematically stolen from peasant villages by Díaz's cronies. In the north, Villa's and Orozco's massive armies attacked federal garrisons wherever they found them, building up impressive arsenals and attracting thousands of new recruits. Villa truly believed in reform; he wanted to see a new, less crooked Mexico. Orozco was more of an opportunist who saw a chance to get in on the ground floor of a movement he was certain would succeed and secure a position of power for himself (such as state governor) with the new regime.

Orozco and Villa had great success against the federal forces and in February 1911, Madero returned and joined them in the north. As the three generals closed in on the capital, Díaz could see the writing on the wall. By May of 1911, it was clear that he could not win, and he went into exile. In June, Madero entered the city in triumph.

The Rule of Madero

Madero barely had time to get comfortable in Mexico City before things got hot. He faced rebellion on all sides, as he broke all of his promises to those who had supported him and the remnants of Díaz's regime hated him. Orozco, sensing that Madero was not going to reward him for his role in the overthrow of Díaz, once again took up arms. Zapata, who had been instrumental in defeating Díaz, took to the field again when it became clear that Madero had no real interest in land reform. In November of 1911, Zapata wrote up his famous Plan of Ayala, which called for Madero's removal, demanded land reform, and named Orozco Chief of the Revolution. Félix Díaz, the former dictator's nephew, declared himself in open rebellion in Veracruz. By the middle of 1912, Villa was Madero's only remaining ally, although Madero did not realize it.

The greatest challenge to Madero was none of these men, however, but one much closer: General Victoriano Huerta, a ruthless, alcoholic soldier left over from the Díaz regime. Madero had sent Huerta to join forces with Villa and defeat Orozco. Huerta and Villa despised one another but managed to drive off Orozco, who fled to the United States. After returning to Mexico City, Huerta betrayed Madero during a standoff with forces loyal to Féliz Díaz. He ordered Madero arrested and executed and set himself up as president.

The Huerta Years

With the quasi-legitimate Madero dead, the country was up for grabs. Two more major players entered the fray. In Coahuila, the former governor Venustiano Carranza took to the field and in Sonora, chickpea farmer and inventor Alvaro Obregón raised an army and entered the action. Orozco returned to Mexico and allied himself with Huerta, but the "Big Four" of Carranza, Obregón, Villa, and Zapata were united in their hatred of Huerta and determined to oust him from power.

Orozco's support was not nearly enough. With his forces fighting on several fronts, Huerta was steadily pushed back. A great military victory might have saved him, as it would have drawn recruits to his banner, but when Pancho Villa won a crushing victory at the Battle of Zacatecas on June 23, 1914, it was over. Huerta fled to exile, and although Orozco fought on for a while in the north, he too went into exile in the United States before too long.

The Warlords at War

With the despised Huerta out of the way, Zapata, Carranza, Obregón, and Villa were the four most powerful men in Mexico. Unfortunately for the nation, the only thing they had ever agreed on was that they did not want Huerta in charge, and they soon fell to fighting one another. In October of 1914, representatives of the "Big Four" as well as several smaller independents met at the Convention of Aguascalientes, hoping to agree on a course of action that would bring peace to the nation. Unfortunately, the peace efforts failed, and the Big Four went to war: Villa against Carranza and Zapata against anyone who entered his fiefdom in Morelos. The wild card was Obregón; fatefully, he decided to stick with Carranza.

The Rule of Carranza

Venustiano Carranza felt that as a former governor, he was the only one of the "Big Four" qualified to rule Mexico, so he set himself up in Mexico City and began organizing elections. His trump card was the support of Obregón, a genius military commander who was popular with his troops. Even so, he did not fully trust Obregón, so he shrewdly sent him after Villa, hoping, no doubt, that the two would finish each other off so that he could deal with the pesky Zapata and Félix Díaz at his leisure.

Obregón headed north to engage Villa in a clash of two of the most successful revolutionary generals. Obregón had been doing his homework, however, reading up on trench warfare being fought abroad. Villa, on the other hand, still relied on the one trick that had carried him so often in the past: an all-out charge by his devastating cavalry. The two met several times, and Villa always got the worst of it. In April of 1915, at the Battle of Celaya, Obregón fought off countless cavalry charges with barbed wire and machine guns, thoroughly routing Villa. The next month, the two met again at the Battle of Trinidad and 38 days of carnage ensued. Obregón lost an arm at Trinidad, but Villa lost the war. His army in tatters, Villa retreated to the north, destined to spend the rest of the revolution on the sidelines.

In 1915, Carranza set himself up as president pending elections and won the recognition of the United States, which was hugely important to his credibility. In 1917, he won the elections he had set up and began the process of stamping out remaining warlords, such as Zapata and Díaz. Zapata was betrayed, set up, ambushed, and assassinated on April 10, 1919, on Carranza's orders. Obregón retired to his ranch with the understanding that he would leave Carranza alone, but he expected to take over as president after the 1920 elections.

The Rule of Obregón

Carranza reneged on his promise to support Obregón in 1920, which proved to be a fatal mistake. Obregón still enjoyed the support of much of the military, and when it became apparent that Carranza was going to install little-known Ignacio Bonillas as his successor, Obregón quickly raised a massive army and marched on the capital. Carranza was forced to flee and was assassinated by supporters of Obregón on May 21, 1920.

Obregón was easily elected in 1920 and served his four-year term as president. For this reason, many historians believe the Mexican Revolution ended in 1920, although the nation suffered from horrible violence for another decade or so until the level-headed Lázaro Cárdenas took office. Obregón ordered the assassination of Villa in 1923 and was himself shot to death by a Roman Catholic fanatic in 1928, ending the time of the "Big Four."

Women in the Revolution

Before the revolution, women in Mexico were relegated to a traditional existence, working in the home and in the fields with their men and wielding little political, economic, or social clout. With the revolution came an opportunity for participation and many women joined up, serving as writers, politicians, and even soldiers. Zapata's army, in particular, was known for the number of female soldaderas among the ranks and even serving as officers. Women who participated in the revolution were reluctant to return to their quiet lifestyle after the dust had settled, and the revolution marks an important milestone in the evolution of Mexican women's rights.

Importance of the Revolution

In 1910, Mexico still had a largely feudal social and economic base: rich landowners ruled like medieval dukes on large estates, keeping their workers impoverished, deep in debt, and with barely enough basic necessities to survive. There were some factories, but the basis of the economy was still mostly in agriculture and mining. Porfirio Díaz had modernized much of Mexico, including laying train tracks and encouraging development, but the fruits of all of this modernization went exclusively to the rich. A drastic change was obviously necessary for Mexico to catch up with other nations, which were developing industrially and socially.

Because of this, some historians feel that the Mexican Revolution was a necessary "growing pain" for the backward nation. This view tends to gloss over the sheer destruction wrought by 10 years of war and mayhem. Díaz may have played favorites with the wealthy, but much of the good that he did-railways, telegraph lines, oil wells, buildings-were destroyed in a classic case of "throwing the baby out with the bathwater." By the time Mexico was once again stable, hundreds of thousands had died, development had been set back by decades, and the economy was in ruins.

Mexico is a nation with tremendous resources, including oil, minerals, productive agricultural land, and hard-working people, and its recovery from the revolution was bound to be relatively speedy. The biggest obstacle to recovery was corruption, and the 1934 election of the honest Lázaro Cárdenas gave the nation a chance to get back on its feet. Today, there are few scars left from the revolution itself, and Mexican schoolchildren may not even recognize the names of minor players in the conflict such as Felipe Angeles or Genovevo de la O.

The lasting effects of the revolution have all been cultural. The PRI, the party that was born in the revolution, held onto power for decades. Emiliano Zapata, the symbol of land reform and proud ideological purity, has become an international icon for just rebellion against a corrupt system. In 1994, a rebellion broke out in Southern Mexico; its protagonists called themselves the Zapatistas and declared that Zapata's revolution was still in progress and would be until Mexico adopted true land reform. Mexico loves a man with personality, and the charismatic Pancho Villa lives on in art, literature, and legend, while the dour Venustiano Carranza has been all but forgotten.

The revolution has proven to be a deep well of inspiration for Mexico's artists and writers. The muralists, including Diego Rivera, remembered the revolution and painted it often. Modern writers such as Carlos Fuentes have set novels and stories in this turbulent era, and films such as Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate take place against the revolutionary backdrop of violence, passion, and change. These works romanticize the gory revolution in many ways, but always in the name of the inner search for national identity that continues in Mexico today.

McLynn, Frank. "Villa and Zapata: A History of the Mexican Revolution." Basic Books, August 15, 2002.

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Your Comprehensive Summary of the Mexican Revolution

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The Mexican Revolution broke out in 1910 when the decades-old rule of President Porfirio Díaz was challenged by Francisco I. Madero, a reformist writer and politician. When Díaz refused to allow clean elections, Madero's calls for revolution were answered by Emiliano Zapata in the south, and Pascual Orozco and Pancho Villa in the north.

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Ph.D., Spanish, Ohio State University

M.A., Spanish, University of Montana

B.A., Spanish, Penn State University

Christopher Minster, Ph.D., is a professor at the ​Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador. He is a former head writer at VIVA Travel Guides.

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What Is the Story of the Mexican Revolution in Photos?

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Ph.D., Spanish, Ohio State University M.A., Spanish, University of Montana B.A., Spanish, Penn State University Christopher Minster, Ph.D., is a professor at the ​Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador. He is a former head writer at VIVA Travel Guides.

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The Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) swept across Mexico like wildfire, destroying the old order and bringing about great changes. For ten bloody years, powerful warlords battled one another and the Federal government. In the smoke, death, and chaos, several men clawed their way to the top. Who were the protagonists of the Mexican Revolution?

Huerta, a raging alcoholic, was one of Diaz' former generals and an ambitious man in his own right. He served Diaz in the early days of the revolution and then stayed on when Madero took office. As former allies like Pascual Orozco and Emiliano Zapata abandoned Madero, Huerta saw his change. Seizing on some fighting in Mexico City as an opportunity, Huerta arrested and executed Madero in February of 1913, seizing power for himself. With the exception of Pascual Orozco, the major Mexican warlords were united in their hatred of Huerta. An alliance of Zapata, Carranza, Villa, and Obregon brought Huerta down in 1914.

Venustiano Carranza was another man who saw the lawless years of the Mexican Revolution as an opportunity. Carranza was a rising political star in his home state of Coahuila and was elected to the Mexican Congress and Senate before the revolution. He supported Madero, but when Madero was executed and the whole nation fell apart, Carranza saw his chance. He named himself President in 1914 and acted as if he were. He fought anyone who said otherwise and allied himself with the ruthless Alvaro Obregon. Carranza eventually reached the presidency (officially this time) in 1917. In 1920, he foolishly double-crossed Obregon, who drove him from the Presidency and had him killed.

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The 8 Most Important People of the Mexican Revolution

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The Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) swept across Mexico like wildfire, destroying the old order and bringing about great changes. For ten bloody years, powerful warlords battled one another and the Federal government. In the smoke, death, and chaos, several men clawed their way to the top. Who were the protagonists of the Mexican Revolution?

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The Elephant Vanishes (Short Stories)

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Murakami, Haruki - The Elephant Vanishes

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Arts

Located about 100 miles south of Memphis in the Mississippi River Delta, the birthplace of the blues, Mississippi State Prison in Parchman, Mississippi, has become as much a historical landmark as it is a penitentiary. It's about 30 miles from where Emmett Till was murdered in 1955, and surrounded by uninhabitable swampland.

Parchman's storied history is the basis for the prison farms featured in the movies "Cool Hand Luke" and "O Brother Where Art Thou?", it's referred to as "destination doom" in a William Faulkner's novel "The Mansion," and it is now a haunted setting in Jesmyn Ward's National Book Award-winning 2017 novel "Sing, Unburied, Sing."

Growing up on Mississippi's southern coast, Ward said that Parchman loomed over her childhood. "When I thought about prison, that's the prison that came to mind," she said. "I didn't know much about it, but I knew it was a place I never wanted to end up. And the danger that I would end up there was a real thing, for me and for people that I know and loved."

Ward writes about two generations of prisoners at Parchman, including two young black inmates in the early part of the century and a white inmate, Michael, who's just been released. "Pop," a father and grandfather, and the ghost of a boy named "Richie" both remember a harsh, painful prison farm of the past. In the present-day of the novel, Michael's character and Richie's ghost says little has changed.

"Sometimes I think it done changed. And then I sleep and wake up, and it ain't changed none," Richie tells the young narrator, JoJo. "It's like a snake that sheds its skin. The outside look different when the scales change, but the inside always the same."

The Pride of Mississippi

The history of Mississippi State Penitentiary is a history of failed reforms. Its creation in 1901 was borne of a statewide shame and frustration at the contemporary system of convict leasing, writes David Oshinsky, historian and author of "Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice."

In the Reconstructionist south, states' coffers were empty, prisons destroyed, and their former free labor supply was emancipated. Many southern states, including Mississippi, began arresting almost exclusively young, black men on charges ranging from laundering to larceny to murder. Some were legitimate, but many more were fabricated or embellished. The state began leasing the prisoners to wealthy contractors, who would further sublease them to companies.

"The convicts, under convict leasing, would do the kind of work that free labor would not want to do. In other words, the work a white worker might not want to do," Oshinsky said.

Under convict leasing, the inmates were essentially slaves again, Oshinsky said. They worked long hours for no pay, were poorly fed, and slept in tents at work sites doing dangerous jobs like dynamiting tunnels for railroad companies and clearing malarial-filled swamps for construction. Convicts, sometimes including children under age 10, were whipped and beaten, underfed, and rarely given medical treatment. Oshinksy writes that between 9 and 16 percent of convicts died yearly in the 1880s.

But poor whites began to resent the system that drove wages down for free workers. In 1904, Mississippi elected a new governor - James Kimble Vardaman - who aimed to reform the system, in part to benefit the lower-class whites. Parchman's first year of operation was in 1905. It was massive, remote, and modeled after a traditional southern plantation.

Convicts worked six days a week, lived in barracks with no separation or classification by crime, and were often subject to punishment by a whip referred to as "Black Annie."

Parchman was originally comprised of three separate farms: a small farm, which was maintained by white convicts, a smaller one farmed by women (mostly black), and a huge sprawling plantation for the prison's black convicts. Over 20,000 acres and 46 miles, it was intended to be self-sufficient and profitable for the state, and it was.

Convicts, called gunmen, picked cotton under the watch of the most violent offenders, who were given guns and called trusty-shooters, or trusties, Oshinsky said. Hogjaw and Kinnie, the trusties Ward writes about in "Sing, Unburied, Sing," were also real men; in 1947 Hogjaw was pardoned for killing an escaping convict. The farm was profitable; in 1918, Oshinsky wrote that the prison had a net revenue of $825,000, or about $800 per inmate.

In 1911, The New York Times ran a sprawling spread in the Sunday edition which heaped praise on the prison.

"The pride of Mississippi, however, is the 'Parchman Place,'" the article read. "Actually instances have been known of when negroes were turned out of the penitentiary, given a new suit and $10 in money, they would not want to leave and would inquire if there was not some way by which they could stay there."

But the reality, says Oshinksy, is that Parchman was nearly uninhabitable. Convicts worked six days a week, lived in barracks with no separation or classification by crime, and were often subject to punishment by a whip referred to as "Black Annie."

Destination Doom

Parchman Farm stayed this way, more or less, for the next 70 years. Cotton picking became mechanized and the state instituted some small reforms. A relatively impotent parole board deferred to the superintendent, Oshinksy writes, and small vocational and educational programs excluded black prisoners. A maximum security unit with a guard tower, fences, and gates housed individual cells, a gas chamber for executions, and a solitary confinement wing.

Otherwise, Parchman remained frozen in time, a segregated, harsh prison farm. It was during this period that it housed some of its most famous prisoners: Elvis Presley's father Vernon was imprisoned in 1938 for "check forgery," and blues singers Bukka White and Son House for dubious claims of violence. After his release, White composed his famous "Parchman Farm Blues," which warned young men about the horror of the prison.

Some of the Freedom Riders, a group of interracial young civil rights activists who boycotted Jim Crow laws, served time at Parchman, although they were segregated from the general population. Claude Liggins, 77, said the racism by the guards at Parchman was mostly directed at the white Freedom Riders. "They couldn't understand why they would want to go against their own race and support us," Liggins, who is black, said. "They had several white men who were beaten almost to death."

In 1971, a civil rights lawyer named Roy Haber visited a convict at Parchman who was challenging his conviction. While there, Haber heard accounts from other inmates and personally witnessed the conditions, which he described as the last legal vestiges of slavery.

Almost a century earlier, the 13th amendment had abolished slavery in all cases except in penal servitude. "You can make somebody work if they're a prisoner. Using that distinction, they were able to maintain a slave state within the prison," Haber said.

Haber represented the inmates in a class action lawsuit against the prison in the now landmark case of Gates v. Collier. In 1971, the judge ruled in favor of the inmates, and throughout the next decade, he forced the prison to desegregate, eliminate "Black Annie" and other unconstitutional forms of punishment, and end the forced field labor.

You can make somebody work if they're a prisoner. Using that distinction, they were able to maintain a slave state within the prison.

The state began to build facilities with real cells and walls, ended the trusty system, and hired professional, often black, guards and administrative staff. At last, it seemed like the prison might function as a rehabilitative facility instead of a slave plantation.
Problems persist
Fast forward closer to the present, and reform has not come easily to Mississippi State Penitentiary. Since Gates v. Collier, a number of lawsuits have brought attention and middling reforms to the prison, which is now about 67 percent black. according to the Mississippi Department of Corrections Monthly Fact Sheet. In 1999, Margaret Winter, at the time associate director of the National Prison Project at the ACLU, represented HIV positive inmates who were not receiving necessary antiviral HIV combination therapy. They alleged that they were segregated from the general population, were barred from holding jobs, and lived in squalor. They were re-integrated in 2001, and the ACLU later reported that conditions for them improved.

In 2002 and 2003, Winter and the ACLU pursued a series of cases on behalf of the death row inmates in the supermax unit, Unit 32. They alleged the conditions were inhumane and that the temperature reached 130 degrees Fahrenheit in some cells. Inmates described to the ACLU intense stench from sewage backups, extreme isolation, and lack of personal hygiene.

Ultimately, a years-long reevaluation of the classification system revealed that approximately 80 percent of the inmates who were determined "high risk" offenders and who were segregated from the general population in the hole were misclassified. Over four years, some 800 previously high-risk prisoners, who had wrongly been in supermax based on the violence of their crime rather than their behavior in prison, were reintegrated back into general population. Educational and rehabilitative programs were instituted. For the first time, the prison had mental health services.

At the time, Christopher Epps, commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Corrections, was leading the charge. He'd battled the ACLU through the various lawsuits and ultimately elected to spearhead the changes to the penal system. Before Unit 32 was shuttered, Epps instituted various education and life skills programs, and allowed exercise and made efforts to reduce solitary confinement at Parchman.

But in 2014, Epps was indicted on federal charges of bribery and kickbacks. In 2016, Epps was sentenced to just under 20 years in prison. In an ironic twist, he was held in solitary confinement in a Tennessee correctional facility.

In today's Parchman, prisoners complain of leaky roofs, broken windows and easy access to contraband. Anthony Sims, a prisoner at Parchman since 1988, when he was convicted of manslaughter, aggravated assault and burglary, says he knows of at least four men who died in his prison unit last year, all from overdoses of smuggled drugs. Five prisoners that the NewsHour spoke with, along with attorneys from the Southern Poverty Law Center, say there are few educational or rehabilitative programs.

The prison disputes this. Grace Fisher, communications director for the Mississippi Department of Corrections, said in an email that the agency has an onsite maintenance department that addresses infrastructure problems when presented. She also said the prison has "zero tolerance for any person - staff, inmate, visitor or vendor - who is instrumental in introducing contraband and that "all inmates have access to programs, based on classification status."

In "Sing, Unburied, Sing," Parchman's historical presence was crucial to Ward. "Because that place casts such a large shadow in Mississippi and in my family, in my community I really wanted to write about it," she said.

And she wanted to tell the prisoners' stories.

"I realized that people just didn't know that there was so much human suffering tied to that place," Ward said. "I wanted it to seem real to people, and I wanted them to know so that the people who suffered in that place, and the people who live with the legacy of that place today, are not forgotten."

The Pride of Mississippi

Destination Doom
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