Here's to You, Jesusa!

By Elena Poniatowska

Book Overview

A remarkable novel that uniquely melds journalism with fiction, by Elena Poniatowska, the recipient of the prestigious 2013 Cervantes Prize Jesusa is a tough, fiery character based on a real working-class Mexican woman whose life spanned some of the seminal events of early twentieth-century Mexican history. Having joined a cavalry unit during the Mexican Revolution, she finds herself at the Revolution's end in Mexico City, far from her native Oaxaca, abandoned by her husband and working menial jobs. So begins Jesusa's long history of encounters with the police and struggles against authority. Mystical yet practical, undaunted by hardship, Jesusa faces the obstacles in her path with gritty determination. Here in its first English translation, Elena Poniatowska's rich, sensitive, and compelling blend of documentary and fiction provides a unique perspective on history and the place of women in twentieth-century Mexico.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0142001228
• ISBN13: 9780142001226
• Release Date: November 2002
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.2" x 7.7"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

An excellent book

Here's to You Jesusa is an excellent book with a story of bravery, history, despair, adventure, survival - everything except love and that is what made it such a sad story. Theauthor did an excellent job of creating a real person with very human faults and weaknesses, but also incredible strengh. It was a story and a character that I kept thinking of long after I had finished reading the book. I highly recommend it.

Enter the world of Mexico

Jesusa is a soldadera, a woman soldier, in the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1917. She describes her experiences in lifefrom childhood to old age-- the choices she made and the problems she had-- the effects of chance and fate.She is the wild woman who drinks in bars, the suffering laborer and servant. She is a spiritualist right under the nose of the Virgin. She occupies a Mexico few tourists have ever seen, a terrain of wonder and terror and the shocks and blows of the unexpected events that make up her life.

Novela testimonial con mucho humor

Hasta no Verte Jesus Mio, es la historia contada por una mujer comun y corriente. Elena Ponietowski hace un trabajo excelente con la literatura testimonial dando a conocer la historia de Mexico. Jesusa Palancares ,la protagonista, es una mujer tipica mexicana en en un mundo donde el machismo sobresale y en otros aspectos, ella es feminista, con gracia y mucho humor. This novel is a most. It is not an easy novel to read because uses typical mexican words, and slang but you will enter to a world most of us are not too aware of it.