Laura Mendez
Laura Méndez de Cuenca (18 August 1853 – 1 November 1928), was a Mexican writer and poet.
Life
Laura María Luisa Elena Méndez Lefort was born on Thursday, 18 August 1853 in the Hacienda de Tamariz, Amecameca, State of Mexico. She died on 1 November 1928 due to complications related to diabetes.[1] Laura attended the Escuela de Artes y Oficios, and later taught at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música in Mexico City.[2]
Laura Méndez went against the social norm prevalent during her time to pursue a career in literature. She entered several literary circles during her youth. It was through such circles that she first met and became friends with Augustine Manuel Acuña and F. Cuenca. Beside her literary career, Méndez was also an educator. She attended several international conferences on pedagogy as a representative of her country. These international exposures also turned her into an active feminist.[3]
After Dolores Correa Zapata stepped down, Méndez became director of a feminist magazine, called La Mujer Mexicana (The Mexican Woman)[4] published from 1904 to 1906. The ideology was directed to the nineteenth century culture of domesticity, but it was one of the first Mexican magazines written by women for women. The women who wrote for La Mujer Mexicana were poets, writers, teachers, lawyers, and doctors, including besides Méndez, attorney María Sandoval de Zarco; writers María Enriqueta Camarillo y Roa de Pereyra[5] and her mother Dolores Roa Bárcena, Dolores Jiménez y Muro[4] and Dolores Correa Zapata, who was also a teacher; the medical doctors Columba Rivera, Guadalupe Sánchez[5] and Antonia Ursúa;[4] and the teachers Luz Fernández Vda. de Herrera and Mateana Murguía de Aveleyra.[5]
References
- ↑ Ángel Muñoz Fernández, Fichero bio-bibliográfico de la literatura mexicana del siglo XIX, tomo 2, México: Factoría, 1995
- ↑ Fernández, Ángel José. "Ensayo de una poética para Laura Méndez de Cuence." Literatura Mexicana. 24.1 (2013): 45–63. Print.
- ↑ "Laura Méndez de Cuenca". Retrieved 2 February 2014.
- 1 2 3 Pierson, Ruth Roach (editor); Chaudhuri, Nupur (editor); McAuley, Beth (editor) (1998). Nation, empire, colony: historicizing gender and race. Bloomington, Ind. [u.a.]: Indiana Univ. Press. p. 118. ISBN 0-253-333-989. Retrieved 31 May 2015.
- 1 2 3 Martín Orozco, Marita (May–December 2005). "La Mujer Mexicana (1904 a 1906), una revista de época" (PDF). Ethos Educativo (in Spanish). Morelia, Michoacán, México: Instiuto Michoacano de Ciencias de la Educación. 33/34: 68–87. Retrieved 31 May 2015.