Marjorie’s new book, Dancing on the Sun Stone, forthcoming Fall 2022

Photo Source: Getty Images

Dancing on the Sun Stone excavates gender, fashion, and the poetry of Octavio Paz

Los Angeles, August 2021 — Marjorie R. Becker’s new book, Dancing on the Sun Stone: Mexican Women, Time, and the Gendered Politics of Octavio Paz, will be published in the Fall of 2022.

This four chapter monograph enters the gendered realms both of Octavio Paz, most particularly in his signature poem, "Sun Stone," and those of the Mexican women dancers Marjorie discovered in her grassroots historical research. The monograph enables the women both respond to Paz's own complex assessment of Mexican gender relations — and to reveal the fashions in which their own expansive gendered behavior defined and reconstructed Mexican historical practices.

Research and writing

Marjorie’s body of research explores Mexican women's perspectives on revolutionary and post-revolutionary social orders denying them equality before the law. With Octavio Paz's ground-breaking Poem "Sun Stone," Marjorie immersed herself in a body of historical research that questions how gendered subjectivities operated in a specifically intriguing post-revolutionary setting. She also explores the fashions in which certain bodies of poetry render the architecture of gendered subjectivities. This research enables Marjorie to question the fashions in which two highly complex and divergent fields themselves can communicate with one another.

Women and empowerment

One of Marjorie’s central, long-standing research projects has focused on the architecture of emotional life experienced by impoverished, frequently illiterate, ethnically divided Mexican women. In particular, her recent articles challenge assumptions about revolutionary approaches to race and ethnic relations. They also ponder the ways in which Mexican women, denied equality before the law, nonetheless challenged both historical and historiographic efforts to silence them.

Keep in touch!

Please keep in touch for updates about this exciting publication forthcoming. If you have not yet done so, please take a moment to subscribe to Marjorie’s newsletter for additional details as they arise.

Marjorie’s Poem to Appear in Special Issue of Pratik: The Ghosts of Paradise

The editors of Pratik: The Ghosts of Paradise, have selected Marjorie R. Becker’s poem, “Just How Ripe, How Negligee, How Long,” an upcoming special issue.

Pratik: The Ghosts of Paradise, edited by Yuyutsu Sharma and Tony Barnstone, will feature a special Los Angeles Double Issue for Summer/Fall 2021. Marjorie R. Becker’s poem will appear in this issue, Vol. XVII, No. 2 and No. 3, this autumn.

Other featured poets include Dana Gioia, Juan Felipe Herrera, Mark Irwin, Ralph Angel, Carol Muske-Dukes, and others. Stay tuned for for more information!

New Poem Accepted by Spillway, A Poetry Magazine

Spillway co-editors, Lynne Thompson and Patricia Smith, have accepted Marjorie R. Becker’s poem, “When Hungry Children Came Around,” for publication in the upcoming issue 29.

The magazine is an annual publication from Tebot Bach, Inc., featuring poetry, reviews, and articles since 1993. Other poets who have been featured in Spillway over time include David St. John, Ilya Kaminsky, and Natalie Diaz. Spillway can be found in bookstores and libraries both nationally and internationally.